Authors:
Andrew Klapper, 779A Anderson Hall, Dept. of Computer Science,
University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 40506-0046, klapper at cs.uky.edu.
www.cs.uky.edu/~klapper/andy.html
Marge Bayer, University of Kansas
Abstract A new index for convex polytopes is introduced. It is a vector whose length is the dimension of the linear span of the flag vectors of polytopes. The existence of this index is equivalent to the generalized Dehn-Sommerville equations. It can be computed via a shelling of the polytope. The ranks of the middle perversity intersection homology of the associated toric variety are computed from the index. This gives a proof of a result of Kalai on the relationship between the Betti numbers of a polytope and those of its dual.