We consider discretization of the 'geometric cover problem' in the plane: Given a set @math of @math points in the plane and a compact planar object @math , find a minimum cardinality collection of planar translates of @math such that the union of the translates in the collection contains all the points in @math . We show that the geometric cover problem can be converted to a form of the geometric set cover, which has a given finite-size collection of translates rather than the infinite continuous solution space of the former. We propose a reduced finite solution space that consists of distinct canonical translates and present polynomial algorithms to find the reduce solution space for disks, convex non-convex polygons (including holes), and planar objects consisting of finite Jordan curves.
Given a set @math of @math points in the plane, the optimal placement problem is to compute a translate that contains the maximum number of points in @math ; note that in our problem, the distinct canonical translates contain the points of @math in a locally maximal manner (see Definition ). There are some optimal placement algorithms for basic planar objects: Chazelle and Lee @cite_2 presented @math time algorithm for disks, and Eppstein and Erickson @cite_27 proposed @math time algorithm for rectangles; for convex polygons of @math vertices, @cite_15 devised @math time algorithm, and @cite_17 improved the time complexity to @math , where @math is the maximum number of points in @math that can be contained in a translate.
@cite_27 @cite_15 @cite_17 @cite_2
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Multiple objects in the plane are called pseudodisks if the boundaries of any two of them intersect transversely at most twice. Given a set of @math (possibly intersecting) convex pseudodisks of @math complexity each and two points @math and @math in the plane, we present an efficient algorithm for computing a shortest @math -to- @math path avoiding the pseudodisks. After the union of the pseudodisks is computed, which can be done in @math randomized time or @math deterministic time, our algorithm runs in @math deterministic time, where @math is the size of the extended visibility graph of the union of the pseudodisks. Note that @math in the worst case. In over two decades, the previously best algorithms for this problem have not improved on the bound of @math time, even when all the pseudodisks are pairwise disjoint disks. Our technique is also applicable to a motion planning problem of finding a shortest path to translate a convex object in the plane from one location to anot... Given a polygon @math , for two points @math and @math contained in the polygon, their is the length of the shortest @math -path within @math . A of radius @math centered at a point @math is the set of points in @math whose geodesic distance to @math is at most @math . We present a polynomial time @math -approximation algorithm for finding a densest geodesic unit disk packing in @math . Allowing arbitrary radii but constraining the number of disks to be @math , we present a @math -approximation algorithm for finding a packing in @math with @math geodesic disks whose minimum radius is maximized. We then turn our focus on of @math and present a @math -approximation algorithm for covering @math with @math geodesic disks whose maximal radius is minimized. Furthermore, we show that all these problems are @math -hard in polygons with holes. Lastly, we present a polynomial time exact algorithm which covers a polygon with two geodesic disks of minimum maximal radius. Motivated by a frequency assignment problem in cellular networks, we introduce and study a new coloring problem that we call minimum conflict-free coloring (min-CF-coloring). In its general form, the input of the min-CF-coloring problem is a set system @math , where each @math is a subset of X. The output is a coloring @math of the sets in @math that satisfies the following constraint: for every @math there exists a color @math and a unique set @math such that @math and @math . The goal is to minimize the number of colors used by the coloring @math . Min-CF-coloring of general set systems is not easier than the classic graph coloring problem. However, in view of our motivation, we consider set systems induced by simple geometric regions in the plane. In particular, we study disks (both congruent and noncongruent), axis-parallel rectangles (with a constant ratio between the smallest and largest rectangle), regular hexagons (with a constant ratio between the smallest and largest hexagon), and general congruent centrally symmetric convex regions in the plane. In all cases we have coloring algorithms that use O(log n) colors (where n is the number of regions). Tightness is demonstrated by showing that even in the case of unit disks, @math colors may be necessary. For rectangles and hexagons we also obtain a constant-ratio approximation algorithm when the ratio between the largest and smallest rectangle (hexagon) is a constant. We also consider a dual problem of CF-coloring points with respect to sets. Given a set system @math , the goal in the dual problem is to color the elements in X with a minimum number of colors so that every set @math contains a point whose color appears only once in S. We show that O(log |X|) colors suffice for set systems in which X is a set of points in the plane and the sets are intersections of X with scaled translations of a convex region. This result is used in proving that O(log n) colors suffice in the primal version. We investigate the minimization of Newton's functional for the problem of the body of minimal resistance with maximal height @math cite butt in the class of convex developable functions defined in a disc. This class is a natural candidate to find a (non-radial) minimizer in accordance with the results of cite lrp2. We prove that the minimizer in this class has a minimal set in the form of a regular polygon with @math sides centered in the disc, and numerical experiments indicate that the natural number @math is a non-decreasing function of @math . The corresponding functions all achieve a lower value of the functional than the optimal radially symmetric function with the same height @math . We prove an incidence theorem for points and planes in the projective space @math over any field @math , whose characteristic @math An incidence is viewed as an intersection along a line of a pair of two-planes from two canonical rulings of the Klein quadric. The Klein quadric can be traversed by a generic hyperplane, yielding a line-line incidence problem in a three-quadric, the Klein image of a regular line complex. This hyperplane can be chosen so that at most two lines meet. Hence, one can apply an algebraic theorem of Guth and Katz, with a constraint involving @math if @math . This yields a bound on the number of incidences between @math points and @math planes in @math , with @math as @math where @math is the maximum number of collinear planes, provided that @math if @math . Examples show that this bound cannot be improved without additional assumptions. This gives one a vehicle to establish geometric incidence estimates when @math . For a non-collinear point set @math and a non-degenerate symmetric or skew-symmetric bilinear form @math , the number of distinct values of @math on pairs of points of @math is @math . This is also the best known bound over @math , where it follows from the Szemer 'edi-Trotter theorem. Also, a set @math , not supported in a single semi-isotropic plane contains a point, from which @math distinct distances to other points of @math are attained. 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. Given n points in the plane, we present algorithms for finding maximum perimeter or area convex k-gons with vertices k of the given n points. Our algorithms work in linear space and time @math . For the special case @math we give @math algorithms for these problems. Several related issues are discussed. Given a set of @math n points, each is painted by one of the @math k given colors, we want to choose @math k points with distinct colors to form a color spanning set. For each color spanning set, we can construct the convex hull and the smallest axis-aligned enclosing rectangle, etc. Assuming that each point is chosen independently and identically from the subset of points of the same color, we propose an @math O ( n 2 ) time algorithm to compute the expected area of convex hulls of the color spanning sets and an @math O ( n 2 ) time algorithm to compute the expected perimeter of convex hulls of the color spanning sets. For the expected perimeter (resp. area) of the smallest perimeter (resp. area) axis-aligned enclosing rectangles of the color spanning sets, we present an @math O ( n log n ) (resp. @math O ( n 2 ) ) time algorithm. We also propose a simple approximation algorithm to compute the expected diameter of the color spanning sets. For the expected distance of the closest pair, we show that it is @math # P-complete to compute and there exists no polynomial time @math 2 n 1 - ? approximation algorithm to compute the probability that the closest pair distance of all color spanning sets equals to a given value @math d unless @math P = N P , even in one dimension and when each color paints two points. We propose a novel geometric structure induced by any given convex polygon @math , called @math , which is an arrangement of @math segments, each of which is parallel to an edge of @math , where @math denotes the number of edges of @math . This structure enjoys six simple yet nontrivial properties, which can be derived from two elementary geometric properties -- convexity and parallelism. We then apply @math to solve the geometric optimization problem of computing the parallelogram(s) in @math with the maximum area. We show that the essential nature of the locally maximal area parallelograms is captured by @math and that computing all these parallelograms reduces to answering @math location queries on @math . We answer each of these queries in @math time, and thus obtain an @math time algorithm for this optimization problem. Our algorithm avoids an explicit construction of @math , which would take @math time. Let @math be a simple polygon of @math vertices. We consider two-point @math shortest path queries in @math . We build a data structure of @math size in @math time such that given any two query points @math and @math , the length of an @math shortest path from @math to @math in @math can be computed in @math time, or in @math time if both @math and @math are vertices of @math , and an actual shortest path can be output in additional linear time in the number of edges of the path. To achieve the result, we propose a mountain decomposition of simple polygons, which may be interesting in its own right. Most importantly, our approach is much simpler than the previous work on this problem. We consider a fundamental problem in unsupervised learning called : given a collection of @math points in @math , if many but not necessarily all of these points are contained in a @math -dimensional subspace @math can we find it? The points contained in @math are called inliers and the remaining points are outliers . This problem has received considerable attention in computer science and in statistics. Yet efficient algorithms from computer science are not robust to adversarial outliers, and the estimators from robust statistics are hard to compute in high dimensions. Are there algorithms for subspace recovery that are both robust to outliers and efficient? We give an algorithm that finds @math when it contains more than a @math fraction of the points. Hence, for say @math this estimator is both easy to compute and well-behaved when there are a constant fraction of outliers. We prove that it is Small Set Expansion hard to find @math when the fraction of errors is any larger, thus giving evidence that our estimator is an optimal compromise between efficiency and robustness. As it turns out, this basic problem has a surprising number of connections to other areas including small set expansion, matroid theory and functional analysis that we make use of here. We study the aggregate group nearest neighbor searching for the MAX operator in the plane. For a set @math of @math points and a query set @math of @math points, the query asks for a point of @math whose maximum distance to the points in @math is minimized. We present data structures for answering such queries for both @math and @math distance measures. Previously, only heuristic and approximation algorithms were given for both versions. For the @math version, we build a data structure of O(n) size in @math time, such that each query can be answered in @math time. For the @math version, we build a data structure in @math time and @math space, such that each query can be answered in @math time, and alternatively, we build a data structure in @math time and space for any @math , such that each query can be answered in @math time. Further, we extend our result for the @math version to the top- @math queries where each query asks for the @math points of @math whose maximum distances to @math are the smallest for any @math with @math : We build a data structure of O(n) size in @math time, such that each top- @math query can be answered in @math time. We study constant-time approximation algorithms for bounded-degree graphs, which run in time independent of the number of vertices @math . We present an algorithm that decides whether a vertex is contained in a some fixed maximal independent set with expected query complexity @math , where @math is the degree bound. Using this algorithm, we show constant-time approximation algorithms with certain multiplicative error and additive error @math for many other problems, e.g., the maximum matching problem, the minimum vertex cover problem, and the minimum set cover problem, that run exponentially faster than existing algorithms with respect to @math and @math . Our approximation algorithm for the maximum matching problem can be transformed to a two-sided error tester for the property of having a perfect matching. On the contrary, we show that every one-sided error tester for the property requires at least @math queries. 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 . A straight-line grid embedding of a planar graph is a drawing of the graph on a plane where the vertices are located at grid points and the edges are represented by nonintersecting segments of straight, lines joining their incident vertices. Given an n-vertex embedded planar graph with @math , a straight-line embedding on a grid of size @math can be computed deterministically in @math time with @math processors. If randomization is used, the complexity is improved to @math expected time with the same optimal linear work. These algorithms run on a parallel random access machine that allows concurrent reads and concurrent writes of the shared memory and permits an arbitrary processor to succeed in case of a write conflict. Finding the so-called characteristic numbers of the complex projective plane @math is a classical problem of enumerative geometry posed by Zeuthen more than a century ago. For a given @math and @math one has to find the number of degree @math genus @math curves that pass through a certain generic configuration of points and in the same time are tangent to certain generic configuration of lines. The total number of points and lines in these two configurations is @math so that the answer is a finite integer number. In this paper we translate this classical problem to the corresponding enumerative problem of tropical geometry in the case when @math . Namely, we show that the tropical problem is well-posed and establish a special case of the correspondence theorem that ensures that the corresponding tropical and classical numbers coincide. Then we use the floor diagram calculus to reduce the problem to pure combinatorics. As a consequence, we compute genus 0 characteristic numbers of @math in terms of open Hurwitz numbers. Given two graphs @math and @math , the Subgraph Isomorphism problem asks if @math is isomorphic to a subgraph of @math . While NP-hard in general, algorithms exist for various parameterized versions of the problem: for example, the problem can be solved (1) in time @math using the color-coding technique of Alon, Yuster, and Zwick; (2) in time @math using Courcelle's Theorem; (3) in time @math using a result on first-order model checking by Frick and Grohe; or (4) in time @math for connected @math using the algorithm of Matou s ek and Thomas. Already this small sample of results shows that the way an algorithm can depend on the parameters is highly nontrivial and subtle. We develop a framework involving 10 relevant parameters for each of @math and @math (such as treewidth, pathwidth, genus, maximum degree, number of vertices, number of components, etc.), and ask if an algorithm with running time [ f_1(p_1,p_2,..., p_ ) n^ f_2(p_ +1 ,..., p_k) ] exist, where each of @math is one of the 10 parameters depending only on @math or @math . We show that all the questions arising in this framework are answered by a set of 11 maximal positive results (algorithms) and a set of 17 maximal negative results (hardness proofs); some of these results already appear in the literature, while others are new in this paper. On the algorithmic side, our study reveals for example that an unexpected combination of bounded degree, genus, and feedback vertex set number of @math gives rise to a highly nontrivial algorithm for Subgraph Isomorphism. On the hardness side, we present W[1]-hardness proofs under extremely restricted conditions, such as when @math is a bounded-degree tree of constant pathwidth and @math is a planar graph of bounded pathwidth. We consider the problem of finding the maximum area parallelogram (MAP) inside a given convex polygon. Our main result is an algorithm for computing the MAP in an @math -sided polygon in @math time. Achieving this running time requires proving several new structural properties of the MAP. Our algorithm actually computes all the locally maximal area parallelograms (LMAPs). In addition to the algorithm, we prove that the LMAPs interleave each other, thus the number of LMAPs is bounded by @math . We discuss applications of our result to, among others, the problem of computing the maximum area centrally-symmetric convex body (MAC) inside a convex polygon, and the simplest case of the Heilbronn Triangle Problem. We develop approximation algorithms for the problem of placing replicated data in arbitrary networks, where the nodes may both issue requests for data objects and have capacity for storing data objects so as to minimize the average data-access cost. We introduce the data placement problem to model this problem. We have a set of caches @math , a set of clients @math , and a set of data objects @math . Each cache @math can store at most @math data objects. Each client @math has demand @math for a specific data object @math and has to be assigned to a cache that stores that object. Storing an object @math in cache @math incurs a storage cost of @math , and assigning client @math to cache @math incurs an access cost of @math . The goal is to find a placement of the data objects to caches respecting the capacity constraints, and an assignment of clients to caches so as to minimize the total storage and client access costs. We present a 10-approximation algorithm for this problem. Our algorithm is based on rounding an optimal solution to a natural linear-programming relaxation of the problem. One of the main technical challenges encountered during rounding is to preserve the cache capacities while incurring only a constant-factor increase in the solution cost. We also introduce the connected data placement problem to capture settings where write-requests are also issued for data objects, so that one requires a mechanism to maintain consistency of data. We model this by requiring that all caches containing a given object be connected by a Steiner tree to a root for that object, which issues a multicast message upon a write to (any copy of) that object. The total cost now includes the cost of these Steiner trees. We devise a 14-approximation algorithm for this problem. We show that our algorithms can be adapted to handle two variants of the problem: (a) a @math -median variant, where there is a specified bound on the number of caches that may contain a given object, and (b) a generalization where objects have lengths and the total length of the objects stored in any cache must not exceed its capacity. 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.