Given a set @math of @math points in the plane, we study the computation of the probability distribution function of both the area and perimeter of the convex hull of a random subset @math of @math . The random subset @math is formed by drawing each point @math of @math independently with a given rational probability @math . For both measures of the convex hull, we show that it is #P-hard to compute the probability that the measure is at least a given bound @math . For @math , we provide an algorithm that runs in @math time and returns a value that is between the probability that the area is at least @math , and the probability that the area is at least @math . For the perimeter, we show a similar algorithm running in @math time. Finally, given @math and for any measure, we show an @math -time Monte Carlo algorithm that returns a value that, with probability of success at least @math , differs at most @math from the probability that the measure is at least @math .
In a more general model of discrete probabilistic points (called multipoint model @cite_0 ), each of the @math points either does not occur or occurs at one of finitely many locations, following its own discrete probability distribution. In this model that generalizes the one considered in this paper, @cite_0 gave exact computations and approximations of the probability that a query point lies in the convex hull, and @cite_12 considered the minimum enclosing ball problem and gave a @math -approximation. In this more general model and other ones, @cite_10 studied approximations of the distribution functions of the solutions of geometric shape-fitting problems, and described the variation of the solutions to these problems with respect to the uncertainty of the points. They noted that in the multipoint model the distribution of area or perimeter of the convex hull may have exponential complexity if all the points lie on or near a circle.
@cite_0 @cite_10 @cite_12
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Consider a set of points in d dimensions where the existence or the location of each point is determined by a probability distribution. The convex hull of this set is a random variable distributed over exponentially many choices. We are interested in finding the most likely convex hull, namely, the one with the maximum probability of occurrence. We investigate this problem under two natural models of uncertainty: the point (also called the tuple) model where each point (site) has a fixed position s i but only exists with some probability π i , for 0 < π i ≤ 1, and the multipoint model where each point has multiple possible locations or it may not appear at all. We show that the most likely hull under the point model can be computed in O(n 3) time for n points in d = 2 dimensions, but it is NP–hard for d ≥ 3 dimensions. On the other hand, we show that the problem is NP–hard under the multipoint model even for d = 2 dimensions. We also present hardness results for approximating the probability of the most likely hull. While we focus on the most likely hull for concreteness, our results hold for other natural definitions of a probabilistic hull. We study the convex-hull problem in a probabilistic setting, motivated by the need to handle data uncertainty inherent in many applications, including sensor databases, location-based services and computer vision. In our framework, the uncertainty of each input point is described by a probability distribution over a finite number of possible locations including a null location to account for non-existence of the point. Our results include both exact and approximation algorithms for computing the probability of a query point lying inside the convex hull of the input, time–space tradeoffs for the membership queries, a connection between Tukey depth and membership queries, as well as a new notion of ( )-hull that may be a useful representation of uncertain hulls. We study the convex-hull problem in a probabilistic setting, motivated by the need to handle data uncertainty inherent in many applications, including sensor databases, location-based services and computer vision. In our framework, the uncertainty of each input site is described by a probability distribution over a finite number of possible locations including a location to account for non-existence of the point. Our results include both exact and approximation algorithms for computing the probability of a query point lying inside the convex hull of the input, time-space tradeoffs for the membership queries, a connection between Tukey depth and membership queries, as well as a new notion of @math -hull that may be a useful representation of uncertain hulls. We describe an @math -time algorithm for computing the exact probability that two @math -dimensional probabilistic point sets are linearly separable, for any fixed @math . A probabilistic point in @math -space is a normal point, but with an associated probability of existence; the existence probabilities of all points are independent. We also show that the @math -dimensional separability problem is equivalent to a @math -dimensional convex hull membership problem, which asks for the probability that a query point lies inside the convex hull of @math probabilistic points. Using this reduction, we improve the current best bound for the convex hull membership problem by a factor of @math . In addition, our algorithms can handle input degeneracies in which more than @math points may lie on a @math -dimensional subspace, thus resolving an open problem in 2013. Finally, we prove lower bounds for the separability problem via a reduction from the @math -SUM problem, which show in particular that our @math algorithms for @math -dimensional separability and @math -dimensional convex hull membership are nearly optimal. With the dramatic growth in the number of application domains that generate probabilistic, noisy and uncertain data, there has been an increasing interest in designing algorithms for geometric or combinatorial optimization problems over such data. In this paper, we initiate the study of constructing epsilon-kernel coresets for uncertain points. We consider uncertainty in the existential model where each point's location is fixed but only occurs with a certain probability, and the locational model where each point has a probability distribution describing its location. An epsilon-kernel coreset approximates the width of a point set in any direction. We consider approximating the expected width (an epsilon-EXP-KERNEL), as well as the probability distribution on the width (an (epsilon, tau)-QUANT-KERNEL) for any direction. We show that there exists a set of O(epsilon^ -(d-1) 2 ) deterministic points which approximate the expected width under the existential and locational models, and we provide efficient algorithms for constructing such coresets. We show, however, it is not always possible to find a subset of the original uncertain points which provides such an approximation. However, if the existential probability of each point is lower bounded by a constant, an epsilon-EXP-KERNEL is still possible. We also provide efficient algorithms for construct an (epsilon, tau)-QUANT-KERNEL coreset in nearly linear time. Our techniques utilize or connect to several important notions in probability and geometry, such as Kolmogorov distances, VC uniform convergence and Tukey depth, and may be useful in other geometric optimization problem in stochastic settings. Finally, combining with known techniques, we show a few applications to approximating the extent of uncertain functions, maintaining extent measures for stochastic moving points and some shape fitting problems under uncertainty. This paper deals with computing the smallest enclosing ball of a set of points subject to probabilistic data. In our setting, any of the n points may not or may occur at one of finitely many locations, following its own discrete probability distribution. The objective is therefore considered to be a random variable and we aim at finding a center minimizing the expected maximum distance to the points according to their distributions. Our main contribution presented in this paper is the first polynomial time (1 + e)-approximation algorithm for the probabilistic smallest enclosing ball problem with extensions to the streaming setting. We study computing with indecisive point sets. Such points have spatial uncertainty where the true location is one of a finite number of possible locations. This data arises from probing distributions a few times or when the location is one of a few locations from a known database. In particular, we study computing distributions of geometric functions such as the radius of the smallest enclosing ball and the diameter. Surprisingly, we can compute the distribution of the radius of the smallest enclosing ball exactly in polynomial time, but computing the same distribution for the diameter is #P-hard. We generalize our polynomial-time algorithm to all LP-type problems. We also utilize our indecisive framework to deterministically and approximately compute on a more general class of uncertain data where the location of each point is given by a probability distribution. We analyze mixture density approximation and estimation. We form a convex set of density functions by taking the convex hull of a parametric family, e.g. mixtures of the Gaussian location family. A sequence of finite mixture densities is formulated to provide a parsimonious approximation for the target density. If the target density itself is in the convex hull, we show that the approximation error goes to zero with a rate of 1 k, where k is the number of components in the approximation. If the target density is outside of the convex hull, the approximation error is equal to the best achievable error plus a term that goes to zero with a rate of 1 k. A greedy algorithm that introduces one component at each step is shown to achieve such an error rate. Similarly, a greedy estimation algorithm is provided to find such approximation for data from an arbitrary density. This algorithm estimates one mixture component at one time. We prove that such an algorithm achieves a likelihood nearly as good as the MLE (maximum likelihood estimate) over the whole convex hull. And we identify the difference as being bounded by order O(1 k), where k is the number of components in the estimate. Risks of such estimators are shown to be bounded by a sum of approximation error and estimation error. The error terms are identified. An optimal choice of k can be derived by minimizing the risk bound. Acting as a similar role as the bandwidth in non-parainetric density estimation, k controls two error terms in opposite directions. A large k reduces approximation error and increases estimation error. A MDL (minimum description length) principle is derived to provide an estimation method for k. And the estimated k is shown to achieve the risk bound as if we know the best k in advance. A new information projection theory is derived to expand the approximating class to include its information closure. We prove the existence and uniqueness of a f* in the closure of the convex hull C (in a sense we identify), such that D ( fpf* ) = infg∈CD fpg , where Dfpg is the Kullback-Leibler divergence. And log(fk) → log(f*) in L1 (f) for any sequence fk in C with Dfpfk→ infg∈CD fpg. Other characterizing properties of f* are also given. In this paper we present several results on the expected complexity of a convex hull of @math points chosen uniformly and independently from a convex shape. (i) We show that the expected number of vertices of the convex hull of @math points, chosen uniformly and independently from a disk is @math , and @math for the case a convex polygon with @math sides. Those results are well known (see rs-udkhv-63,r-slcdn-70,ps-cgi-85 ), but we believe that the elementary proof given here are simpler and more intuitive. (ii) Let @math be a set of directions in the plane, we define a generalized notion of convexity induced by @math , which extends both rectilinear convexity and standard convexity. We prove that the expected complexity of the @math -convex hull of a set of @math points, chosen uniformly and independently from a disk, is @math , where @math is the largest angle between two consecutive vectors in @math . This result extends the known bounds for the cases of rectilinear and standard convexity. (iii) Let @math be an axis parallel hypercube in @math . We prove that the expected number of points on the boundary of the quadrant hull of a set @math of @math points, chosen uniformly and independently from @math is @math . Quadrant hull of a set of points is an extension of rectilinear convexity to higher dimensions. In particular, this number is larger than the number of maxima in @math , and is also larger than the number of points of @math that are vertices of the convex hull of @math . Those bounds are known bkst-anmsv-78 , but we believe the new proof is simpler. In this paper, we study the linear separability problem for stochastic geometric objects under the well-known unipoint multipoint uncertainty models. Let S=S_R U S_B be a given set of stochastic bichromatic points, and define n = min |S_R|, |S_B| and N = max |S_R|, |S_B| . We show that the separable-probability (SP) of S can be computed in O(nN^ d-1 ) time for d >= 3 and O(min nN log N, N^2 ) time for d=2, while the expected separation-margin (ESM) of S can be computed in O(nN^d) time for d >= 2. In addition, we give an Omega(nN^ d-1 ) witness-based lower bound for computing SP, which implies the optimality of our algorithm among all those in this category. Also, a hardness result for computing ESM is given to show the difficulty of further improving our algorithm. As an extension, we generalize the same problems from points to general geometric objects, i.e., polytopes and or balls, and extend our algorithms to solve the generalized SP and ESM problems in O(nN^d) and O(nN^ d+1 ) time, respectively. Finally, we present some applications of our algorithms to stochastic convex-hull related problems. In applications throughout science and engineering one is often faced with the challenge of solving an ill-posed inverse problem, where the number of available measurements is smaller than the dimension of the model to be estimated. However in many practical situations of interest, models are constrained structurally so that they only have a few degrees of freedom relative to their ambient dimension. This paper provides a general framework to convert notions of simplicity into convex penalty functions, resulting in convex optimization solutions to linear, underdetermined inverse problems. The class of simple models considered includes those formed as the sum of a few atoms from some (possibly infinite) elementary atomic set; examples include well-studied cases from many technical fields such as sparse vectors (signal processing, statistics) and low-rank matrices (control, statistics), as well as several others including sums of a few permutation matrices (ranked elections, multiobject tracking), low-rank tensors (computer vision, neuroscience), orthogonal matrices (machine learning), and atomic measures (system identification). The convex programming formulation is based on minimizing the norm induced by the convex hull of the atomic set; this norm is referred to as the atomic norm. The facial structure of the atomic norm ball carries a number of favorable properties that are useful for recovering simple models, and an analysis of the underlying convex geometry provides sharp estimates of the number of generic measurements required for exact and robust recovery of models from partial information. These estimates are based on computing the Gaussian widths of tangent cones to the atomic norm ball. When the atomic set has algebraic structure the resulting optimization problems can be solved or approximated via semidefinite programming. The quality of these approximations affects the number of measurements required for recovery, and this tradeoff is characterized via some examples. Thus this work extends the catalog of simple models (beyond sparse vectors and low-rank matrices) that can be recovered from limited linear information via tractable convex programming. We consider the stochastic geometry model where the location of each node is a random point in a given metric space, or the existence of each node is uncertain. We study the problems of computing the expected lengths of several combinatorial or geometric optimization problems over stochastic points, including closest pair, minimum spanning tree, (k )-clustering, minimum perfect matching, and minimum cycle cover. We also consider the problem of estimating the probability that the length of closest pair, or the diameter, is at most, or at least, a given threshold. Most of the above problems are known to be ( # P )-hard. We obtain FPRAS (Fully Polynomial Randomized Approximation Scheme) for most of them in both the existential and locational uncertainty models. Our result for stochastic minimum spanning trees in the locational uncertain model improves upon the previously known constant factor approximation algorithm. Our results for other problems are the first known to the best of our knowledge. We propose a general framework for nonparametric classification of multi-dimensional numerical patterns. Given training points for each class, it builds a set cover with convex sets each of which contains some training points of the class but no points of the other classes. Each convex set has thus an associated class label, and classification of a query point is made to the class of the convex set such that the projection of the query point onto its boundary is minimal. In this sense, the convex sets of a class are regarded as ''prototypes'' for that class. We then apply this framework to two special types of convex sets, minimum enclosing balls and convex hulls, giving algorithms for constructing a set cover with them and for computing the projection length onto their boundaries. For convex hulls, we also give a method for implicitly evaluating whether a point is contained in a convex hull, which can avoid computational difficulty for explicit construction of convex hulls in high-dimensional space. In this paper we characterize the convex hull of feasible points for a disjunctive program, a class of problems which subsumes pure and mixed integer programs and many other nonconvex programming problems. Two representations are given for the convex hull of feasible points, each of which provides linear programming equivalents of the disjunctive program. The first one involves a number of new variables proportional to the number of terms in the disjunctive normal form of the logical constraints; the second one involves only the original variables and the facets of the convex hull. Among other results, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for an inequality to define a facet of the convex hull of feasible points. For the class of disjunctive programs that we call facial, we establish a property which makes it possible to obtain the convex hull of points satisfying n disjunctions, in a sequence of n steps, where each step generates the convex hull of points satisfying one disjunction only. We propose a probabilistic formulation of joint silhouette extraction and 3D reconstruction given a series of calibrated 2D images. Instead of segmenting each image separately in order to construct a 3D surface consistent with the estimated silhouettes, we compute the most probable 3D shape that gives rise to the observed color information. The probabilistic framework, based on Bayesian inference, enables robust 3D reconstruction by optimally taking into account the contribution of all views. We solve the arising maximum a posteriori shape inference in a globally optimal manner by convex relaxation techniques in a spatially continuous representation. For an interactively provided user input in the form of scribbles specifying foreground and background regions, we build corresponding color distributions as multivariate Gaussians and find a volume occupancy that best fits to this data in a variational sense. Compared to classical methods for silhouette-based multiview reconstruction, the proposed approach does not depend on initialization and enjoys significant resilience to violations of the model assumptions due to background clutter, specular reflections, and camera sensor perturbations. In experiments on several real-world data sets, we show that exploiting a silhouette coherency criterion in a multiview setting allows for dramatic improvements of silhouette quality over independent 2D segmentations without any significant increase of computational efforts. This results in more accurate visual hull estimation, needed by a multitude of image-based modeling approaches. We made use of recent advances in parallel computing with a GPU implementation of the proposed method generating reconstructions on volume grids of more than 20 million voxels in up to 4.41 seconds. We present a fully dynamic randomized data structure that can answer queries about the convex hull of a set of n points in three dimensions, where insertions take O(log3n) expected amortized time, deletions take O(log6n) expected amortized time, and extreme-point queries take O(log2n) worst-case time. This is the first method that guarantees polylogarithmic update and query cost for arbitrary sequences of insertions and deletions, and improves the previous O(ne)-time method by Agarwal and Matousek a decade ago. As a consequence, we obtain similar results for nearest neighbor queries in two dimensions and improved results for numerous fundamental geometric problems (such as levels in three dimensions and dynamic Euclidean minimum spanning trees in the plane). This paper is centered on the complexity of graph problems in the well-studied LOCAL model of distributed computing, introduced by Linial [FOCS '87]. It is widely known that for many of the classic distributed graph problems (including maximal independent set (MIS) and (Δ+1)-vertex coloring), the randomized complexity is at most polylogarithmic in the size n of the network, while the best deterministic complexity is typically 2O(√logn). Understanding and potentially narrowing down this exponential gap is considered to be one of the central long-standing open questions in the area of distributed graph algorithms. We investigate the problem by introducing a complexity-theoretic framework that allows us to shed some light on the role of randomness in the LOCAL model. We define the SLOCAL model as a sequential version of the LOCAL model. Our framework allows us to prove completeness results with respect to the class of problems which can be solved efficiently in the SLOCAL model, implying that if any of the complete problems can be solved deterministically in logn rounds in the LOCAL model, we can deterministically solve all efficient SLOCAL-problems (including MIS and (Δ+1)-coloring) in logn rounds in the LOCAL model. Perhaps most surprisingly, we show that a rather rudimentary looking graph coloring problem is complete in the above sense: Color the nodes of a graph with colors red and blue such that each node of sufficiently large polylogarithmic degree has at least one neighbor of each color. The problem admits a trivial zero-round randomized solution. The result can be viewed as showing that the only obstacle to getting efficient determinstic algorithms in the LOCAL model is an efficient algorithm to approximately round fractional values into integer values. In addition, our formal framework also allows us to develop polylogarithmic-time randomized distributed algorithms in a simpler way. As a result, we provide a polylog-time distributed approximation scheme for arbitrary distributed covering and packing integer linear programs. Recent empirical research indicates that many convex optimization problems with random constraints exhibit a phase transition as the number of constraints increases. For example, this phenomenon emerges in the @math minimization method for identifying a sparse vector from random linear samples. Indeed, this approach succeeds with high probability when the number of samples exceeds a threshold that depends on the sparsity level; otherwise, it fails with high probability. @PARASPLIT This paper provides the first rigorous analysis that explains why phase transitions are ubiquitous in random convex optimization problems. It also describes tools for making reliable predictions about the quantitative aspects of the transition, including the location and the width of the transition region. These techniques apply to regularized linear inverse problems with random measurements, to demixing problems under a random incoherence model, and also to cone programs with random affine constraints. @PARASPLIT These applications depend on foundational research in conic geometry. This paper introduces a new summary parameter, called the statistical dimension, that canonically extends the dimension of a linear subspace to the class of convex cones. The main technical result demonstrates that the sequence of conic intrinsic volumes of a convex cone concentrates sharply near the statistical dimension. This fact leads to an approximate version of the conic kinematic formula that gives bounds on the probability that a randomly oriented cone shares a ray with a fixed cone. We discuss a new conceptual framework for the convexification of discrete optimization problems, and a general technique for obtaining approximations to the convex hull of the feasible set. The concepts come from disjunctive programming and the key tool is a description of the convex hull of a union of polyhedra in terms of a higher dimensional polyhedron. Although this description was known for several years, only recently was it shown by Jeroslow and Lowe to yield improved representations of discrete optimization problems. We express the feasible set of a discrete optimization problem as the intersection (conjunction) of unions of polyhedra, and define an operation that takes one such expression into another, equivalent one, with fewer conjuncts. We then introduce a class of relaxations based on replacing each conjunct (union of polyhedra) by its convex hull. The strength of the relaxations increases as the number of conjuncts decreases, and the class of relaxations forms a hierarchy that spans the spec... Finite convex geometries are combinatorial structures. It follows from a recent result of M. Richter and L.G. Rogers that there is an infinite set @math of planar convex polygons such that @math with respect to geometric convex hulls is a locally convex geometry and every finite convex geometry can be represented by restricting the structure of @math to a finite subset in a natural way. An @math is a differentiable convex simple closed curve @math in the plane having an inscribed circle of radius @math and a circumscribed circle of radius @math such that the ratio @math is at least @math . Motivated by Richter and Rogers' result, we construct a set @math such that (1) @math contains all points of the plane as degenerate singleton circles and all of its non-singleton members are differentiable convex simple closed planar curves; (2) @math with respect to the geometric convex hull operator is a locally convex geometry; (3) as opposed to @math , @math is closed with respect to non-degenerate affine transformations; and (4) for every (small) positive @math and for every finite convex geometry, there are continuum many pairwise affine-disjoint finite subsets @math of @math such that each @math consists of almost-circles of accuracy @math and the convex geometry in question is represented by restricting the convex hull operator to @math . The affine-disjointness of @math and @math means that, in addition to @math , even @math is disjoint from @math for every non-degenerate affine transformation @math .