Nice question. Here I just mention an interesting idea used in this GIS StackExchange postingGIS StackExchange posting by whuber (William Huber): Find $n$ clusters among your $N$ points, and take the center of those clusters as your $n$ points. As he says, "You can see it's not great (but it's not too bad, either)." Below, $N=1000$ (colored points), $n=200$ (gray points):
Nice question. Here I just mention an interesting idea used in this GIS StackExchange posting by whuber (William Huber): Find $n$ clusters among your $N$ points, and take the center of those clusters as your $n$ points. As he says, "You can see it's not great (but it's not too bad, either)." Below, $N=1000$ (colored points), $n=200$ (gray points):
Nice question. Here I just mention an interesting idea used in this GIS StackExchange posting by whuber (William Huber): Find $n$ clusters among your $N$ points, and take the center of those clusters as your $n$ points. As he says, "You can see it's not great (but it's not too bad, either)." Below, $N=1000$ (colored points), $n=200$ (gray points):
Nice question. Here I just mention an interesting idea used in this GIS StackExchange posting by whuber (William Huber): Find $n$ clusters among your $N$ points, and take the center of those clusters as your $n$ points. As he says, "You can see it's not great (but it's not too bad, either)." Below, $N=1000$ (colored points), $n=200$ (gray points):
