| Abstract: | It was remarked by P. Erd?s, J. C. Fowler, V. T. Sós, and R. M. Wilson, (J Combin Theory Ser A 38, 1985, 131–142), that a non‐degenerate finite linear space on v points has the following property. For every point P the number of lines not passing through P is at least  with equality if and only if the linear space is a projective plane. We give a short proof for this result using an algebraic tool. The main purpose of the article however is to generalize this result in the direction that gives a lower bound for the number of lines not passing through a given number d of points. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 14: 441–450, 2006 |
