When a planar graph is drawn without edges crossing, the edges and vertices of the graph divide the plane into regions. We will call each region a face. The graph above has 3 faces (yes, we do include the “outside” region as a face). The number of faces does not change no matter how you draw the graph (as long as you do so without the edges crossing), so it makes sense to ascribe the number of faces as a property of the planar graph.
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