Optimal Area-Sensitive Bounds for Polytope Approximation

Approximating convex bodies is a fundamental question in geometry and has a wide variety of applications. Given a convex body $K$ of diameter $\Delta$ in $\mathbb{R}^d$ for fixed $d$, the objective is to minimize the number of vertices (alternatively, the number of facets) of an approximating polytope for a given Hausdorff error $\varepsilon$. The best known uniform bound, due to Dudley (1974), shows that $O((\Delta/\varepsilon)^{(d-1)/2})$ facets suffice. While this bound is optimal in the case of a Euclidean ball, it is far from optimal for ``skinny'' convex bodies. A natural way to characterize a convex object's skinniness is in terms of its relationship to the Euclidean ball. Given a convex body $K$, define its surface diameter $\Delta_{d-1}$ to be the diameter of a Euclidean ball of the same surface area as $K$. It follows from generalizations of the isoperimetric inequality that $\Delta \geq \Delta_{d-1}$. We show that, under the assumption that the width of the body in any direction is at least $\varepsilon$, it is possible to approximate a convex body using $O((\Delta_{d-1}/\varepsilon)^{(d-1)/2})$ facets. This bound is never worse than the previous bound and may be significantly better for skinny bodies. The bound is tight, in the sense that for any value of $\Delta_{d-1}$, there exist convex bodies that, up to constant factors, require this many facets. The improvement arises from a novel approach to sampling points on the boundary of a convex body. We employ a classical concept from convexity, called Macbeath regions. We demonstrate that Macbeath regions in $K$ and $K$'s polar behave much like polar pairs. We then apply known results on the Mahler volume to bound their number

Existence and approximation of densities of chord length- and cross section area distributions

In various stereological problems an n-dimensional convex body is intersected with an (n−1)-dimensional Isotropic Uniformly Random (IUR) hyperplane. In this paper the cumulative distribution function associated with the (n−1)-dimensional volume of such a random section is studied. This distribution is also known as chord length distribution and cross section area distribution in the planar and spatial case respectively. For various classes of convex bodies it is shown that these distribution functions are absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure. A Monte Carlo simulation scheme is proposed for approximating the corresponding probability density functions

On the Combinatorial Complexity of Approximating Polytopes

Approximating convex bodies succinctly by convex polytopes is a fundamental problem in discrete geometry. A convex body $K$ of diameter $\mathrm{diam}(K)$ is given in Euclidean $d$-dimensional space, where $d$ is a constant. Given an error parameter $\varepsilon > 0$, the objective is to determine a polytope of minimum combinatorial complexity whose Hausdorff distance from $K$ is at most $\varepsilon \cdot \mathrm{diam}(K)$. By combinatorial complexity we mean the total number of faces of all dimensions of the polytope. A well-known result by Dudley implies that $O(1/\varepsilon^{(d-1)/2})$ facets suffice, and a dual result by Bronshteyn and Ivanov similarly bounds the number of vertices, but neither result bounds the total combinatorial complexity. We show that there exists an approximating polytope whose total combinatorial complexity is $\tilde{O}(1/\varepsilon^{(d-1)/2})$, where $\tilde{O}$ conceals a polylogarithmic factor in $1/\varepsilon$. This is a significant improvement upon the best known bound, which is roughly $O(1/\varepsilon^{d-2})$. Our result is based on a novel combination of both old and new ideas. First, we employ Macbeath regions, a classical structure from the theory of convexity. The construction of our approximating polytope employs a new stratified placement of these regions. Second, in order to analyze the combinatorial complexity of the approximating polytope, we present a tight analysis of a width-based variant of B\'{a}r\'{a}ny and Larman's economical cap covering. Finally, we use a deterministic adaptation of the witness-collector technique (developed recently by Devillers et al.) in the context of our stratified construction.Comment: In Proceedings of the 32nd International Symposium Computational Geometry (SoCG 2016) and accepted to SoCG 2016 special issue of Discrete and Computational Geometr

A Geometric Lower Bound Theorem

We resolve a conjecture of Kalai relating approximation theory of convex bodies by simplicial polytopes to the face numbers and primitive Betti numbers of these polytopes and their toric varieties. The proof uses higher notions of chordality. Further, for C^2-convex bodies, asymptotically tight lower bounds on the g-numbers of the approximating polytopes are given, in terms of their Hausdorff distance from the convex body.Comment: 26 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Geometric and Functional Analysi

Computing Mixed Discriminants, Mixed Volumes, and Permanents

We construct a probabilistic polynomial time algorithm that computes the mixed discriminant of given n positive definite matrices within a 2 O(n) factor. As a corollary, we show that the permanent of an nonnegative matrix and the mixed volume of n ellipsoids in R n can be computed within a 2 O(n) factor by probabilistic polynomial time algorithms. Since every convex body can be approximated by an ellipsoid, the last algorithm can be used for approximating in polynomial time the mixed volume of n convex bodies in R n within a factor n O(n) .Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/42420/1/454-18-2-205_18n2p205.pd