Point Configurations in d -Space without Large Subsets in Convex Position

This paper starts the investigation of a constrained version of the point-set embed-dability problem. Let G = (V,E) be a planar graph with n vertices, G′ = (V′,E′) a subgraph of G, and S a set of n distinct points in the plane. We study the problem of computing a point-set embedding of G on S subject to the constraint that G′ is drawn with straight-line edges. Different drawing algorithms are presented that guarantee small curve complexity of the resulting drawing, i.e. a small number of bends per edge. It is proved that: • If G′ is an outerplanar graph and S is any set of points in convex position, a point-set embedding of G on S can be computed such that the edges of E\E′ have at most 4 bends each. • If S is any set of points in general position and G′ is a face of G or if it is a simple path, the curve complexity of the edges of E\E′ is at most 8. • If S is in general position and G′ is a set of k disjoint paths, the curve complexity of the edges of E \ E′ is O(2k).

Lower bounds on the maximum number of non-crossing acyclic graphs

Any set of n points in convex position in the plane induces at most 2n congruent copies of a fixed isosceles triangle. Furthermore, at most 2n–4 congruent isosceles right triangles can be induced by a set of n points in convex position, and in strictly convex position at most n congruent isosceles right triangles can be induced.

Extremal problems on triangle areas in two and three dimensions

The allowable sequence associated to a configuration of points was first developed by the authors in order to investigate what combinatorial structure lay behind the Erdős-Szekeres conjecture (that any 2 n-2 + 1 points in general position in the plane contain among them n points which are in convex position). Though allowable sequences did not lead to any progress on this ancient problem, there did emerge an object that had considerable intrinsic interest, that turned out to be related to some other well-studied structures such as pseudoline arrangements and oriented matroids, and that had as well a combinatorial simplicity and suggestiveness which turned out to be effective in the solution of several other classical problems. These connections and applications are discussed in Sections 2, 3, and 4 of this paper.

Three polynomials are defined for given sets $S$ of $n$ points in general position in the plane: The Voronoi polynomial with coefficients the numbers of vertices of the order-$k$ Voronoi diagrams of $S$, the circle polynomial with coefficients the numbers of circles through three points of $S$ enclosing $k$ points of $S$, and the $E_{\leq k}$ polynomial with coefficients the numbers of (at most $k$)-edges of $S$. We present several formulas for the rectilinear crossing number of $S$ in terms of these polynomials and their roots. We also prove that the roots of the Voronoi polynomial lie on the unit circle if, and only if, $S$ is in convex position. Further, we present bounds on the location of the roots of these polynomials.

We consider preprocessing a set S of n points in the plane that are in convex position into a data structure supporting queries of the following form: given a point q and a directed line l in the plane, report the point of S that is farthest from (or, alternatively, nearest to) the point q subject to being to the left of line l. We present two data structures for this problem. The first data structure uses O(n1+e) space and preprocessing time, and answers queries in O(21/e log n) time. The second data structure uses O(n log3n) space and polynomial preprocessing time, and answers queries in O(log n) time. These are the first solutions to the problem with O(log n) query time and o(n2) space. In the process of developing the second data structure, we develop a new representation of nearest-point and farthest-point Voronoi diagrams of points in convex position. This representation supports insertion of new points in counterclockwise order using only O(log n) amortized pointer changes, subject to supporting O(log n)-time point-location queries, even though every such update may make Θ(n) combinatorial changes to the Voronoi diagram. This data structure is the first demonstration that deterministically and incrementally constructed Voronoi diagrams can be maintained in o(n) pointer changes per operation while keeping O(log n)-time point-location queries.

On the stretch factor of Delaunay triangulations of points in convex position

The paper bounds the combinatorial complexity of the Voronoi diagram of a set of points under certain polyhedral distance functions. Specifically, if S is a set of n points in general position in R d , the maximum complexity of its Voronoi diagram under the L ∞ metric, and also under a simplicial distance function, are both shown to be \(\Theta(n^{\lceil d/2 \rceil})\) . The upper bound for the case of the L ∞ metric follows from a new upper bound, also proved in this paper, on the maximum complexity of the union of n axis-parallel hypercubes in R d . This complexity is \(\Theta(n^{\left\lceil d/2 \right\rceil})\) , for d ≥ 1 , and it improves to \(\Theta(n^{\left\lfloor d/2 \right\rfloor})\) , for d ≥ 2 , if all the hypercubes have the same size. Under the L 1 metric, the maximum complexity of the Voronoi diagram of a set of n points in general position in R 3 is shown to be \(\Theta(n^2)\) . We also show that the general position assumption is essential, and give examples where the complexity of the diagram increases significantly when the points are in degenerate configurations. (This increase does not occur with an appropriate modification of the diagram definition.) Finally, on-line algorithms are proposed for computing the Voronoi diagram of n points in Rd under a simplicial or L ∞ distance function. Their expected randomized complexities are \(O(n \log n + n ^{\left\lceil d/2 \right\rceil})\) for simplicial diagrams and \(O(n ^{\left\lceil d/2 \right\rceil} \log ^{d-1} n)\) for L ∞ -diagrams.

Computing farthest neighbors on a convex polytope

We study the following family of problems: Given a set of $n$ points in convex position, what is the maximum number triangles one can create having these points as vertices while avoiding certain sets of forbidden configurations. As forbidden configurations we consider all 8 ways in which a pair of triangles in such a point set can interact. This leads to 256 extremal Turán-type questions. We give nearly tight (within a $\log n$ factor) bounds for 248 of these questions and show that the remaining 8 questions are all asymptotically equivalent to Stein's longstanding tripod packing problem.

Long alternating paths in bicolored point sets

Given n red and n blue points in convex position in the plane, we show that there exists a noncrossing alternating path of length \(n+c\sqrt{n\over \log n}\). We disprove a conjecture of Erdős by constructing an example without any such path of length greater than \({4\over 3}n+c'\sqrt{n}\).KeywordsPlanar GraphOuter SegmentHamiltonian CycleAlternate PathBlue PointThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

We study several problems concerning convex polygons whose vertices lie in a Cartesian product of two sets of n real numbers (for short, grid). First, we prove that every such grid contains a convex polygon with Omega(log n) vertices and that this bound is tight up to a constant factor. We generalize this result to d dimensions (for a fixed d in N), and obtain a tight lower bound of Omega(log^{d-1}n) for the maximum number of points in convex position in a d-dimensional grid. Second, we present polynomial-time algorithms for computing the longest convex polygonal chain in a grid that contains no two points with the same x- or y-coordinate. We show that the maximum size of such a convex polygon can be efficiently approximated up to a factor of 2. Finally, we present exponential bounds on the maximum number of convex polygons in these grids, and for some restricted variants. These bounds are tight up to polynomial factors.

In this paper we describe a technique of fusing larger scenes from multiple views, using a landmark approach. For images of remote scenes, the fused image is reconstructed using sample mean shapes on affine shape manifolds. This manifold of configurations of points in general position is a real Grassmann manifold which can be equivariantly embedded in a space of matrices, and we consider the extrinsic means w.r.t. this embedding. On the other hand, for photographs taken from a close distance by a noncalibrated camera, the fused image is reconstructed using sample mean shapes on projective shape manifolds. This manifold of configurations of points under a given projective frame is a product of real projective planes and we consider extrinsic means w.r.t. to a standard embedding in a space of blocks of symmetric matrices. We illustrate these methods on two sets of images.