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Questions tagged [mg.metric-geometry]

Euclidean, hyperbolic, discrete, convex, coarse geometry, metric spaces, comparisons in Riemannian geometry, symmetric spaces.

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Higher dimensional generalization of: Any quadrilateral tiles the plane?

Any (non-self-intersecting) quadrilateral tiles the plane.     (MathWorld image.) Q. What is the strongest known generalization of this statement to higher dimensions? I.e., $\mathbb{R}^d$ ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
18 votes
1 answer
911 views

Is the ball reducible in some high dimension?

Let $K$ be a bounded symmetric ($-K=K$) open convex body in $\mathbb R^n$. The critical determinant $d(K)$ of $K$ is the least possible volume $|\operatorname{det}(a_1\dots a_n)|$ of the fundamental ...
fedja's user avatar
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18 votes
1 answer
400 views

Finitely generated groups with Hölder-exotic space of ends?

The space of ends of a finitely generated group is always homeomorphic to 0, 1, 2 points, or a Cantor set, and in which of these 4 cases it falls is governed by Stallings' characterization (wikipedia ...
YCor's user avatar
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18 votes
2 answers
1k views

An equivalence relation for norms

Let us say that two norms $\|\cdot\|_1$ and $\|\cdot\|_2$ on a real vector space $V$ are strongly equivalent if there exists a constant $\lambda \geq 1$ such that $$ \frac{1}{\lambda} \left( \|x\|_1 +...
alvarezpaiva's user avatar
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18 votes
1 answer
502 views

Asymmetric metrics and cohomology

If $(X,d)$ is a metric space and $f : X \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$ is a Lipschitz function with Lipschitz constant $k < 1$, then the function $$ D(x,y) := d(x,y) + f(y) - f(x) $$ defines an asymmetric ...
alvarezpaiva's user avatar
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18 votes
1 answer
2k views

What can be said about the Shadow hull and the Sight hull?

This is a question implicitly raised by Is the sphere the only surface all of whose projections are circles? Or: Can we deduce a spherical Earth by observing that its shadows on the Moon are always ...
Bill Thurston's user avatar
18 votes
1 answer
599 views

Lower-Hölder embeddings of the sphere

My question is very simple: Given $d\ge 3$, does there exist $s\in (0,1)$ and an embedding $f:S^{d-1}\to \mathbb{R}^d$ such that $$ |f(x)-f(y)| \ge |x-y|^s \quad\textrm{if } |x-y|<r, $$ for ...
Pablo Shmerkin's user avatar
18 votes
0 answers
480 views

Trapping lightrays with segment mirrors

Q. Is it possible to trap all the light from one point source by a finite collection of two-sided disjoint segment mirrors? I posed this question in several forums before (e.g., here and in an ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
18 votes
0 answers
667 views

The lonely molecule

Suppose $n$ air molecules (infinitesimal points) are bouncing around in a unit $d$-dimensional cube, with perfectly elastic wall collisions. Let $k=n^{\frac{1}{d}}$. For example, in 3D, $d=3$, with $n=...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
18 votes
0 answers
503 views

Lipschitz constant of a homotopy

Let $n>0$, $\mathbb S^n$ be $n$-sphere and $1\in \mathbb S^n$ be its north pole. A am looking for an example of compact manifold $M$ with a continuous $n$-parameter family of maps $h_x\colon M\to ...
Anton Petrunin's user avatar
17 votes
3 answers
2k views

Decidability of tiling R^2

Does there exist a closed curve, with finite area and finite circumference, of which it is undecidable (in an axiomatic system where it is constructable) whether it can tile the plane? I know the ...
fastforward's user avatar
17 votes
4 answers
2k views

Metrics for lines in $\mathbb{R}^3$?

I seek a metric $d(\cdot,\cdot)$ between pairs of (infinite) lines in $\mathbb{R}^3$. Let $s$ be the minimum distance between a pair of lines $L_1$ and $L_2$. Ideally, I would like these properties: ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
10 answers
17k views

College (Euclidean) geometry textbook recommendations

I will be teaching a mid-level undergraduate course in Euclidean geometry this fall. Has anyone taught such a course, who can recommend a good textbook? My students will mostly be future high school ...
17 votes
2 answers
5k views

Square of the distance function on a Riemannian manifold

Let $(M^n,g)$ be a smooth Riemannian manifold. Consider the square of the distance function $$dist^2\colon M\times M\to \mathbb{R}$$ given by $(x,y)\mapsto dist^2(x,y)$. It is easy to see that this ...
asv's user avatar
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17 votes
4 answers
2k views

Planar sets where any line through the center of mass divides the set into two regions of equal area.

This question is influenced by the following riddle: You are given a rectangular set in the plane with a rectangular hole cut out (in any orientation). How do you cut the region into two sets of ...
Otis Chodosh's user avatar
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17 votes
4 answers
823 views

Sweep-segment bot: Will this random walk sweep the plane?

This model is inspired by the random behavior of the Roomba sweeping robot. Let a unit segment $ab$ in the plane be placed initially with $a=(0,0)$ and $b=(1,0)$. The segment is first rotated a ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
4 answers
1k views

Can I build infinitely many polytopes from only finitely many prescribed facets?

Given a finite set of convex $d$-dimensional polytopes $\mathcal P$, for some $d\ge 2$. Question: Is it true that there are only finitely many different convex $(d+1)$-dimensional polytopes whose ...
M. Winter's user avatar
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17 votes
4 answers
1k views

How did ancient greek geometers represent solids?

I've seen plenty of ancient diagrams representing plane figures.* But I'd like to know how ancient geometers, especially around the time of Euclid, might have represented solids. Did they use diagrams ...
Arnold Brooks's user avatar
17 votes
3 answers
4k views

Convex hull on a Riemannian manifold

Let $M$ be a complete Riemannian 2-manifold. Define a subset $C$ of $M$ to be convex if all shortest paths between any two points $x,y \in C$ are completely contained within $C$. For a finite set of ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
3 answers
972 views

What is known about sufficient conditions for the rigidity of a convex surface?

A convex surface is a connected open subset of the boundary of a convex body in $\mathbb{R}^3$. An "infinitesimal bending" of a convex surface $S$ is a deformation of $S$ given by a velocity field $v:...
Eben Kadile's user avatar
17 votes
5 answers
883 views

Rigidity of convex polyhedrons in $\mathbb R^3$ with faces removed

Take a convex polyhedron $P$ in $\mathbb R^3$ and remove all the faces, i.e. leave only the edges. Call this graph $E$. Let us now try to continuously deform $E$ in $\mathbb R^3$ so that all the edges ...
aglearner's user avatar
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17 votes
3 answers
2k views

Axioms for constructive Euclidean geometry

In the summer I will be teaching a course in (plane) Euclidean geometry to future high school teachers and I am looking for a suitable axiom system (unlike College (Euclidean) geometry textbook ...
Stefan Witzel's user avatar
17 votes
3 answers
6k views

When does the set of isometries form a group?

Motivation Its a classic set up. Take a metric space $M$, with distance function $d:M\times M\to \mathbb{R}$. The set of isometries of $M$ is the set of functions $f: M \to M$ which preserve distance. ...
Edmund Harriss's user avatar
17 votes
3 answers
2k views

The minimum of a sum of absolute values of inner products in $\mathbb{R}^d$

Consider a collection of unit vectors $v_1, \ldots, v_n$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$ (we think of $n$ being much larger than $d$). I would like to minimize the sum: $$\sum_{i\neq j}|\langle v_i,v_j\rangle|.$$ ...
TOM's user avatar
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17 votes
1 answer
819 views

Is a facet always a maximal area section of a simplex?

Let $T\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ be a fixed simplex, $H\subset \mathbb{R}^n$ be a variable affine hyperplane. Is it true that the maximal area (i.e. the $(n-1)$-dimensional volume) of $T\cap H$ is attained ...
Fedor Petrov's user avatar
17 votes
4 answers
772 views

Partitions of $\mathbb{R}^d$ by implicit polynomial equations

Given a polynomial $p(x_1,x_2,\ldots,x_d)$ in $d$ variables, with maximum degree $k$, what is the maximum number of components of $\mathbb{R}^d$ minus $p(\ldots)=0$? In other words, into how many ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
2 answers
1k views

What kind of probability distribution maximizes the average distance between two points?

If $f$ is a probability distribution on the unit disk in $\mathbb{R}^2$, and $X_1$ and $X_2$ are two independent samples from $f$, then what is the distribution $f^*$ that maximizes the average ...
Shirley Leong's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
2k views

How to efficiently vacuum the house

Let $P$ be a polygon (perhaps with no acute angles inside) and let $L$ be a line segment. The segment may move through the area inside $P$ in straight lines, orthogonal to $L$, or it may pivot on any ...
Alejandro Erickson's user avatar
17 votes
3 answers
2k views

Optimal 8-vertex isoperimetric polyhedron?

I know from Marcel Berger's Geometry Revealed: A Jacob's Ladder to Modern Higher Geometry (p.531) that it is not yet established which polyhedron in $\mathbb{R}^3$ on 8 vertices achieves the optimal ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
2 answers
781 views

Are there locally jammed arrangements of spheres of zero density?

I know of a remarkable result from a paper of Matthew Kahle (PDF download), that there are arbitrarily low-density jammed packings of congruent disks in $\mathbb{R}^2$: In 1964 Böröczky used a ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
2 answers
2k views

Efficiently determine if convex hull contains the unit ball

Given a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$, is there an algorithm to determine if the convex hull contains the unit ball centered at the origin in polynomial time (in both $n$ and $d$)? The convex ...
Simd's user avatar
  • 3,377
17 votes
1 answer
1k views

Totally rational polytopes

Define a convex polytope in $\mathbb{R}^d$ as totally rational (my terminology) if its vertex coordinates are rational, its edge lengths are rational, its two-dimensional face areas are rational, etc.,...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
1k views

Essentially one random metric on $\mathbb{S}^2$?

I heard it claimed that there is, in some sense, only one random metric on $\mathbb{S}^2$. I would appreciate any pointer to literature that explicates this intriguing claim. So far my own searches ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
703 views

Is there a bounded sequence of points in the plane with pairwise distances at least $1/\sqrt{|i-j|}$?

Previously I have mentioned the following problem in an addition to the list of Contest problems with connections to deeper mathematics. Is there an infinite bounded sequence $(P_n) \subset \mathbb{...
Vesselin Dimitrov's user avatar
17 votes
2 answers
892 views

Maximum thickness of three linked Euclidean solid tori

Consider three circles of radius $1$ in $\mathbb{R}^3$, linked with each other in the same arrangement as three fibers of the Hopf fibration. Now thicken the circles up into non-overlapping standard ...
Henry Segerman's user avatar
17 votes
2 answers
1k views

Why are the medians of a triangle concurrent? In absolute geometry

This fact holds true in absolute geometry, and I would like to see an elementary synthetic proof not using the classification of absolute planes (Euclidean and hyperbolic planes) and specific models. ...
Fedor Petrov's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
526 views

Is $\partial X$ a sphere for $X$ a complete CAT$(0)$ space?

Let $X$ be a complete CAT$(0)$ metric space, and $\partial X$ its boundary. One way to define $\partial X$ is as the equivalence class of geodesic rays $\gamma(t), \gamma'(t)$ that remain within a ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
822 views

Is the perimeter of an ellipse with integer axes irrational?

Let $Q$ be an ellipse with integer-length axes $a$ and $b$: $$ \frac{x^2}{a^2} + \frac{y^2}{b^2} = 1 \;.$$ The perimeter of $Q$ is given by the complete elliptic integral of the 2nd kind, $E(\;)$: $4 ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
2 answers
406 views

Random rings linked into one component?

Let $S$ be a sphere of unit radius. Let $C_n$ be a collection of unit-radius circles/rings whose centers are (uniformly distributed) random points in $S$, and which are oriented (tilted) randomly (...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
536 views

Does the boundary of a convex body contain a regular planar pentagon?

How to prove or disprove that the boundary of any convex body in $\mathbb{R}^3$ includes 5 points which form a regular planar pentagon? The following consideration suggests the answer "yes": if we ...
user64494's user avatar
  • 3,486
17 votes
1 answer
458 views

The sparsest planar net that captures every unit segment

Let $\cal C = \lbrace C_i \rbrace$ be a collection of rectifiable curves in the plane with the property that every unit-length segment meets at least one curve in at least one point. Call such a ...
Joseph O'Rourke's user avatar
17 votes
2 answers
982 views

Placing points on a sphere so that no 3 lie close to the same plane

Motivation I am working with arbitrary parallelopiped tilings given by projection from a higher dimensional space. The collection of tiles, and some properties of the higher dimensional space are ...
Edmund Harriss's user avatar
17 votes
2 answers
1k views

A probability distribution in n dimensional space which its projection on any line is a uniform distribution?

Does there exist, for any natural $n$, a probability distribution in $\mathbb{R}^n$ whose projection on any line is a uniform distribution?
Erfan Salavati's user avatar
17 votes
3 answers
1k views

Prescribing areas of parallelograms (or 2x2 principal minors)

Let $(a_{ij})$ be a $n\times n$ symmetric matrix such that $a_{ij}\geq 0$ for all $i,j$ and $a_{ii}=0$ for all $i$. Under which conditions on the $a_{ij}$'s can one find $n$ vectors $v_1,\ldots,v_n\in{...
Julien Maubon's user avatar
17 votes
2 answers
950 views

Isoperimetric-like inequality for non-connected sets

The classical isoperimetric inequality can be stated as follows: if $A$ and $B$ are sets in the plane with the same area, and if $B$ is a disk, then the perimeter of $A$ is larger than the perimeter ...
Guillaume Aubrun's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
363 views

Hopping geodesics

Is there a complete metric space $X$ with the following property? For any pair of points $p,q\in X$ there is unique minimizing geodesic $[pq]_X$ that connects $p$ to $q$, but the map $(p,q)\mapsto [...
Anton Petrunin's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
740 views

Are all Dehn invariants achievable?

The Dehn invariant of a polyhedron is a vector in $\mathbb{R}\otimes_{\mathbb{Z}}\mathbb{R}/2\pi\mathbb{Z}$ defined as the sum over the edges of the polyhedron of the terms $\sum\ell_i\otimes\theta_i$ ...
David Eppstein's user avatar
17 votes
1 answer
1k views

When is the Gromov--Hausdorff limit of a sequence of manifolds itself a manifold?

Suppose a metric space $X$ is the Gromov--Hausdorff limit of a sequence of Riemannian three-manifolds $M_i$ with Ricci curvature bounded from below and not collapsed. Is $X$ a manifold? What ...
Su Xin's user avatar
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