We investigate several computational problems related to the stochastic convex hull (SCH). Given a stochastic dataset consisting of @math points in @math each of which has an existence probability, a SCH refers to the convex hull of a realization of the dataset, i.e., a random sample including each point with its existence probability. We are interested in computing certain expected statistics of a SCH, including diameter, width, and combinatorial complexity. For diameter, we establish the first deterministic 1.633-approximation algorithm with a time complexity polynomial in both @math and @math . For width, two approximation algorithms are provided: a deterministic @math -approximation running in @math time, and a fully polynomial-time randomized approximation scheme (FPRAS). For combinatorial complexity, we propose an exact @math -time algorithm. Our solutions exploit many geometric insights in Euclidean space, some of which might be of independent interest.
Specifically, the expected diameter of a SCH was investigated in some recent works. Huang and Li @cite_17 provided an FPRAS for computing the expected farthest-pair distance of a stochastic dataset in a metric space. This directly implies an FPRAS for computing the expected diameter of a SCH, since in Euclidean space the farthest-pair distance of a set of points is just the diameter of their convex hull. However, an FPRAS can only obtain the desired approximation with high probability, and there seems no way to verify whether an answer obtained by the FPRAS is truly a good approximation. @cite_3 gave a deterministic @math -approximation algorithm in @math , which is based on (exactly) computing the expected diameter of the stochastic smallest enclosing ball. Although @cite_3 only considered the case in @math , the algorithm can be naturally extended to compute a @math -approximation of the expected diameter of a SCH in @math . Nevertheless, the runtime of this algorithm grows exponentially as @math increases, since computing the expected diameter of the stochastic smallest enclosing ball requires @math time @cite_1 . The width and combinatorial complexity of a SCH have not yet been investigated previously, to our best knowledge.
@cite_1 @cite_3 @cite_17
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Let @math be a tree space (or tree network) represented by a weighted tree with @math vertices, and @math be a set of @math stochastic points in @math , each of which has a fixed location with an independent existence probability. We investigate two fundamental problems under such a stochastic setting, the closest-pair problem and the nearest-neighbor search. For the former, we study the computation of the @math -threshold probability and the expectation of the closest-pair distance of a realization of @math . We propose the first algorithm to compute the @math -threshold probability in @math time for any given threshold @math , which immediately results in an @math -time algorithm for computing the expected closest-pair distance. Based on this, we further show that one can compute a @math -approximation for the expected closest-pair distance in @math time, by arguing that the expected closest-pair distance can be approximated via @math threshold probability queries. For the latter, we study the @math most-likely nearest-neighbor search ( @math -LNN) via a notion called @math most-likely Voronoi Diagram ( @math -LVD). We show that the size of the @math -LVD @math of @math on @math is bounded by @math if the existence probabilities of the points in @math are constant-far from 0. Furthermore, we establish an @math average-case upper bound for the size of @math , by regarding the existence probabilities as i.i.d. random variables drawn from some fixed distribution. Our results imply the existence of an LVD data structure which answers @math -LNN queries in @math time using average-case @math space, and worst-case @math space if the existence probabilities are constant-far from 0. Finally, we also give an @math -time algorithm to construct the LVD data structure. 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. At [email protected]?10, Agarwal and Sharathkumar presented a streaming algorithm for approximating the minimum enclosing ball of a set of points in d-dimensional Euclidean space. Their algorithm requires one pass, uses O(d) space, and was shown to have approximation factor at most (1+3) [email protected] 1.3661. We prove that the same algorithm has approximation factor less than 1.22, which brings us much closer to a (1+2) 2 1.207 lower bound given by Agarwal and Sharathkumar. We also apply this technique to the dynamic version of the minimum enclosing ball problem (in the non-streaming setting). We give an O(dn)-space data structure that can maintain a 1.22-approximate minimum enclosing ball in O(dlogn) expected amortized time per insertion deletion. Given a set S of n sites (points), and a distance measure d , the nearestneighborsearching problem is to build a data structure so that given a query point q , the site nearest to q can be found quickly. This paper gives data structures for this problem when the sites and queries are in a metric space. One data structure, D(S) , uses a divide-and-conquer recursion. The other data structure, M(S,Q) , is somewhat like a skiplist. Both are simple and implementable. The data structures are analyzed when the metric space obeys a certain sphere-packing bound, and when the sites and query points are random and have distributions with an exchangeability property. This property implies, for example, that query point q is a random element of ( S q ) . Under these conditions, the preprocessing and space bounds for the algorithms are close to linear in n . They depend also on the sphere-packing bound, and on the logarithm of the distanceratio ( (S) ) of S , the ratio of the distance between the farthest pair of points in S to the distance between the closest pair. The data structure M(S,Q) requires as input data an additional set Q , taken to be representative of the query points. The resource bounds of M(S,Q) have a dependence on the distance ratio of S ( )Q . While M(S,Q) can return wrong answers, its failure probability can be bounded, and is decreasing in a parameter K . Here K≤ |Q| n is chosen when building M(S,Q) . The expected query time for M(S,Q) is O(Klog n)log ( (S Q) ) , and the resource bounds increase linearly in K . The data structure D(S) has expected O( log n) O(1) query time, for fixed distance ratio. The preprocessing algorithm for M(S,Q) can be used to solve the all nearest neighbor problem for S in O(n(log n) 2 (log ϒ(S)) 2 ) expected time.