Deletion-Contraction Recurrence for the Tutte Polynomial is a result in [matroid theory](/page/Matroid%20Theory). It formalizes the assertion that let be a finite matroid on ground set with rank function , and let . Let denote the deletion of , and let denote the contraction of . Then the Tutte polynomial satisfies the following recurrence: If is a loop of , then \begin{align } T.