Questions tagged [computational-geometry]
Using computers to solve geometric problems. Questions with this tag should typically have at least one other tag indicating what sort of geometry is involved, such as ag.algebraic-geometry or mg.metric-geometry.
503 questions
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On cutting disks from planar regions
Question: Given a planar region $R$ of unit area and an integer $n$, to cut $n$ circular disks (their sizes need not be equal) such that the highest fraction of $R$ is taken off.
A simple greedy ...
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Complexity of scissors congruence?
Where is the complexity of the problem 'Given two bounded compact convex integral polyhedra in $\mathbb R^n$ presented by $O(poly(n))$ integer valued halfspaces given by linear inequalities with ...
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Constructing a polyhedron of maximal possible volume from given bounds on areas of its faces
Consider $n$ variables $a_1,...,a_n$ ranging over $\mathbb{R}^+$. Suppose we are given $n$ pairs of positive rational numbers $(p_1,q_1),...,(p_n,q_n)$ where each pair imposes bounds on the ...
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Minimum distance between two arbitrary circles in space?
What is the minimum distance between two arbitrary circles in space?
I am working out the problem with Maxima, but I am surprised by how complicated this rapidly turns out to unfold for such a "...
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Is there an upper bound on the number of points in point cloud for which we compute the persistent homology?
I am interested in the topic of persistent homology (topological data analysis). According to what I read, there is some roadblock in the analysis of "big data" using persistent homology as it is ...
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"Average" Voronoi diagrams without probability?
A plane Poisson process with uniform intensity scatters "sites" about the plane. If I'm not mistaken, in a sense the "average" Voronoi diagram of that set of sites is a honeycomb. I know it's been ...
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Is the maximal packing density of identical circles in a circle always an algebraic number?
There is a lot of interest in the maximal density of equal circle packing in a circle. And I thought that knowing whether or not the solution is always algebraic or not would be useful.
My original ...
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Counting points above lines
Consider a set $P$ of $N$ points in the unit square and a set $L$ of $N$ non-vertical lines. Can we count the number of pairs $$\{(p,\ell)\in P\times L: p\; \text{lies above}\; \ell\}$$ in time $\...
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How hard is it to determine if a weighted graph can be isometrically embedded in R^3?
Consider a graph $G$ with nonnegative edge weights.
Question: In $\mathbb{R}^3$, how hard is it to assign coordinates to vertices such that the Euclidean length of each edge is equal to its weight?
...
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What are the applications of Voronoi diagrams in pure mathematics? [closed]
Voronoi diagrams have interesting mathematical properties and applications in algorithms and modeling. But what are its applications in pure mathematics? For example, what theorems can be proved using ...
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Random Vornoi Diagrams (particular measures)
This is my second question about Random Voronoi diagrams, in my first question was given some excellent advice but i was not clear in explaining what i was looking for.
I'm interested to know ...
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Finding an axis-aligned ellipsoid of minimal volume which contains a given ellipsoid
A friend asked me to post the following question. He's not an MO user and felt it would be better received if asked by someone who was already known to the community. This is not my area, but I'll do ...
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Check if a polygon has an axis of symmetry in $O(n)$ time
Question: Is it possible to check if an $n$-gon has an axis of symmetry in $O(n)$ time?
Note: An $O(n^2)$ algorithm is easy to see: it is easy to check if any given line is an axis of symmetry of the $...
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Intersections of irreducible components
Let $V$ be an algebraic variety (not irreducible) over $\mathbb{C}$, defined by an ideal $I = \{f_1,f_2,\dots, f_n\}$. $V$ is not necessarily pure dimensional. Suppose $V = R_1\cup R_2\cup\dots\cup ...
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What is the most general class of metric spaces for which the closest pair of points in a finite subset can be found in time O(n^(1+eps))?
What is the most general class of metric spaces for which the closest pair of points in any finite subset can be found in time O(n^(1+eps))? I have studied how to do this in O(n log(n)) in the plane, ...
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Intersections of quadratic planes as elliptic curves
An elliptic curve defined over a field $k$ is a smooth projective curve of genus $1$, plus a $k$-rational point. Every elliptic curve can be written in a Weierstrass form, i.e. as a plane cubic curve ...
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Average vertex degree in finite Delaunay triangulations in high dimensions
In $\mathbb{R}^2$ it's known that with a "random" point configuration, the average degree of a vertex in its Delaunay triangulation is 6.
Does anyone know of a similar result in higher dimension? I ...
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On intersections of several convex regions
Question: Given n convex planar regions. Required to place them (in suitable position and orientation) so that that part of the plane lying under all the regions (their common intersection) is of ...
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Convex caps with prescribed edges
Let $P$ be a convex polygon in the plane $R^2=R^2\times \{0\}$, and $E$ be the edge graph of some subdivision of $P$ into convex polygons, which is $3$-connected. Does there exist a convex polyhedral ...
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Intersecting a convex polytope with the unit sphere
I have a list of $m$ affine inequalities in $n$ variables of the following form
$$a_1 x_1 + \cdots + a_n x_n \leq c_n$$
I would like to know whether there is any point on the unit sphere in $\...
user47305
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Fast algorithms for calculating the distance between measures on finite ultrametric spaces
Let $X$ be a finite ultrametric space and $P(X)$ be the space of probability measures on $X$ endowed with the Wasserstein-Kantorovich-Rubinstein metric (briefly WKR-metric) defined by the formula
$$\...
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Fast computation of a ball with radius r with largest number of input points
We are given a set S of n points equipped with some metric and an integer $r>0$. We define $B(x,r) \subseteq S$ (the ball with radius r centered in x) to be the set of points in S within distance r ...
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Minimum euclidean spanning tree in n dimensional space
I need to compute the minimum euclidean spanning tree in $R^d$ and do it with some algorithm that can do it with complexity near to $\Omega(nlogn)$ where $n$ is the size of the point set.
Right now I'...
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Do random triangulation edge-flips maintain randomness?
Let $S$ be a fixed set of $n$ points in the plane in general position.
Let $T$ be a triangulation
of $S$, (somehow) selected
uniformly at random from all triangulations of $S$.
(There are an ...
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Given a polygon with holes, find a maximum distance pair in two subsets
I am curious about the following problem:
Given a polygon with holes and two convex subsets, $S$ and $T$, find points $s \in S, t \in T$ such that the shortest path between the two points has maximal ...
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Maximal geometric mean of distances between points on an interval
Suppose I had T points in the interval $[0,1]$. Call them $e_1, \dots, e_T$.
Question 1:
What is a good nontrivial bound on the geometric mean of $$\{|e_i - e_j| : 1 \leq i < j \leq T \}, $$ as a ...
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Biggest ball included in an intersection of balls
I would like to prove that for any family of balls $\{B(c_i,r_i)\}_i \subset \mathbb{R}^d$ such that $\{c_1, \dots, c_n\} \subset \bigcap_i B(c_i,r_i) $ and $\forall i, r_i \geq 1$, there exists a ...
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Calculating $n$-dimensional hypervolumes ($n \sim 50$), for example
I have a question regarding efficient and possibly simple algorithms for computing volumes of $n$-dimensional polytopes.
The polytope of concern isn't arbitrary: it is obtained by applying a linear ...
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Triangulation of the surface determined by sampling two of its cross-sections
I have a data set that essentially looks like the picture below, i.e., it's given by sets of points in $\mathbb{R}^3$ that sample the cross-sections of a certain surface that in principle I do not ...
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If a polyhedron in $\mathbb{R}^3$ has local intersections, does it also have more global intersections?
Consider a simplicial complex $K$. A piecewise linear map $f: K \to \mathbb{R}^n$ is an almost-embedding if $f(\sigma) \cap f(\tau) = \emptyset$ for any two disjoint simplices $\sigma,\tau$ in $K$.
...
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Simultaneous geometric separator
A geometric separator is a line that separates a given set of shapes to two subsets of approximately the same size (up to a constant), while intersecting only a small number of shapes. When a ...
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On folding a polygonal sheet
Consider a polygonal sheet $P$ of area $A$ with $N$ vertices (it material is not stretchable or tearable). Let $n$ be a positive integer >=2.
Question: Let $P$ lie on a flat plane. We need to fold ...
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Connectedness of semialgebraic sets via CAD
I do not know whether there is a standard or some traditional ways to decide whether a semialgebraic set is connected or not.
One way I know is the cylindrical algebraic decomposition (CAD) algorithm. ...
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Expressing a convex Polytope as a sublevel set of a function
Given an n-dimensional polytope $P$ in $\mathbb R^n$, Given as a convex hull of a finite set of points, $S$ I would like to construct an expliict formula for a function $f\colon \mathbb R^n \to \...
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Minimizing variance of distances between points when mean distance is fixed
In Rd, I have n > d+1 points. The mean distance between pairs of points is 1. How can I minimize the variance of the distances (equivalently, the mean squared distance)? I'm mainly interested in d &...
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Generalizations of the "Curious Tiger" Polygon
I actually don't know, whether the polygon I describe here already has name, but let me explain the problem, that is solved by the polygon, with a little story:
Imagine a flat terrain with bushes of ...
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Checking a Guarding for the Art Gallery Problem
In the Art Gallery Problem, we have given
a polygon $P$ on $n$ vertices and a number $k$ and we
want to know if there exists $k$ guards
such that every point inside the polygon
is seen by at least ...
- 479
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Graph spectra and topology
This is a somewhat vague question, but I'm wondering if there has been any research into connections between the spectrum of a graph and some notion of the "topology" of that graph.
To give an ...
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Ascertain properties of a new kind of rectilinear-convex set
PREABMLE TO MY QUESTION
I am reading about convex sets and hulls in orthogonal/rectilinear spaces. As can be seen in this publication, for a given set of points in $\mathbb{R}^{2}$, there are many ...
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Closest vertices of an AABB to a ray in n-dimensions
I came across this computational geometry problem and have not been able to find a satisfactory solution for it. A ray is known to originate from within an n-dimensional hypercube (AABB) in any ...
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Computing sums with linear conditions quickly
Let $f:\{1,\dotsc,N\}\to \mathbb{C}$, $\beta:\{1,\dotsc,N\}\to [0,1]$ be given by tables (or, what is basically the same, assume their values can be computed in constant time). For $0\leq \gamma_0\leq ...
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special classes of ideals (eg. toric) that admit faster Buchberger algorithm?
I have heard that toric ideals allow one to speed up the Buchberger algorithm considerably (see Grobner bases of toric ideals, Remark 2,3). My question is two-fold:
What are the precise complexity-...
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Problem to efficiently compute the Volume of $d$ anchored 4D cuboids
An easy still unsolved special case of Klee's measure problem with applications in multiple objective optimization is described in the following.
Let $[\vec a_1,\vec b_1],\dots,[\vec a_n,\vec b_n]$ ...
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Are nearby points in an algebraic curve necessarily connected?
I would like a result of the following form:
For every algebraic curve $C$ in $\mathbb{R}\mathbf{P}^{n-1}$, there exists an
explicit and easy-to-compute $\epsilon=\epsilon(C)>0$ such that ...
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Can this set of equations be solved explicitly for algebraic curves?
In my recent work I stumbled upon a set of two equations. I'm interested in solving by eliminating auxiliary variable "$z$" and getting algebraic curve in terms of $x$ and $y$ given by the zero locus ...
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Reach of manifold vs. $C^k$-manifold
The reach $\tau_M$ of a manifold $M$ is the largest number such that any point at distance less than $\tau_M$ from $M$ has a unique nearest point on $M$.
This concept seems quite related to the local ...
- 151k
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Find the axis of symmetry in a point cloud
I have some dataset which describes a spherical cloud of points in 4D space. Actually, the coordinates of the points are the coefficients of unit quaternions, so you get the idea on what the data is ...
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Determining N d-points yielding equal sums of Euclidean distances from M s-points
Given M source points (s-points), determine N, the number of destination points (d-points), and their locations (coordinates), such that the sum of the N Euclidean distances from each source point to ...
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Euclidean Minimum Spanning Trees Restricted to One Vertex Per Grid Cell
Given an $n \times n$ grid with unit grid cells, and one point from the interior
of each cell, what is are best possible lower and upper bounds for lengths of minimum spanning trees? The lower bound ...
user71114
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Intuition behind minimizing the Dirichlet energy of a mapping
What does minimizing the Dirichlet energy of a mapping $\Phi$ achieve intuitively?
Roughly it is the integral (or sum, if discrete) of $|\nabla \Phi(\;)|^2 dV$, with $V$ the volume.
So is it, in some ...
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