On Cutting Planes and Matrices

Continuing the work of Chvatal and Gomory, Schrljver proved that any rational polyhedron {xlAx<;b} has finite Chv&tal rank. This was extended by Cook, Gerards, Schrljver and Tardos, who proved that in fact this Chv&tal rank can be bounded from above by a number only depending on A, so Independent of b. The aim of this note is to show that the latter result can be proved quite easily from the result of Chv&tal and Schrljver.