22 research outputs found
Pixel and Voxel Representations of Graphs
We study contact representations for graphs, which we call pixel
representations in 2D and voxel representations in 3D. Our representations are
based on the unit square grid whose cells we call pixels in 2D and voxels in
3D. Two pixels are adjacent if they share an edge, two voxels if they share a
face. We call a connected set of pixels or voxels a blob. Given a graph, we
represent its vertices by disjoint blobs such that two blobs contain adjacent
pixels or voxels if and only if the corresponding vertices are adjacent. We are
interested in the size of a representation, which is the number of pixels or
voxels it consists of.
We first show that finding minimum-size representations is NP-complete. Then,
we bound representation sizes needed for certain graph classes. In 2D, we show
that, for -outerplanar graphs with vertices, pixels are
always sufficient and sometimes necessary. In particular, outerplanar graphs
can be represented with a linear number of pixels, whereas general planar
graphs sometimes need a quadratic number. In 3D, voxels are
always sufficient and sometimes necessary for any -vertex graph. We improve
this bound to for graphs of treewidth and to
for graphs of genus . In particular, planar graphs
admit representations with voxels
Mixing Times of Markov Chains on Degree Constrained Orientations of Planar Graphs
We study Markov chains for -orientations of plane graphs, these are
orientations where the outdegree of each vertex is prescribed by the value of a
given function . The set of -orientations of a plane graph has
a natural distributive lattice structure. The moves of the up-down Markov chain
on this distributive lattice corresponds to reversals of directed facial cycles
in the -orientation. We have a positive and several negative results
regarding the mixing time of such Markov chains.
A 2-orientation of a plane quadrangulation is an orientation where every
inner vertex has outdegree 2. We show that there is a class of plane
quadrangulations such that the up-down Markov chain on the 2-orientations of
these quadrangulations is slowly mixing. On the other hand the chain is rapidly
mixing on 2-orientations of quadrangulations with maximum degree at most 4.
Regarding examples for slow mixing we also revisit the case of 3-orientations
of triangulations which has been studied before by Miracle et al.. Our examples
for slow mixing are simpler and have a smaller maximum degree, Finally we
present the first example of a function and a class of plane
triangulations of constant maximum degree such that the up-down Markov chain on
the -orientations of these graphs is slowly mixing
The State of the Art in Cartograms
Cartograms combine statistical and geographical information in thematic maps,
where areas of geographical regions (e.g., countries, states) are scaled in
proportion to some statistic (e.g., population, income). Cartograms make it
possible to gain insight into patterns and trends in the world around us and
have been very popular visualizations for geo-referenced data for over a
century. This work surveys cartogram research in visualization, cartography and
geometry, covering a broad spectrum of different cartogram types: from the
traditional rectangular and table cartograms, to Dorling and diffusion
cartograms. A particular focus is the study of the major cartogram dimensions:
statistical accuracy, geographical accuracy, and topological accuracy. We
review the history of cartograms, describe the algorithms for generating them,
and consider task taxonomies. We also review quantitative and qualitative
evaluations, and we use these to arrive at design guidelines and research
challenges
Towards Characterizing Graphs with a Sliceable Rectangular Dual
\u3cp\u3eLet G be a plane triangulated graph. A rectangular dual of G is a partition of a rectangle R into a set R of interior-disjoint rectangles, one for each vertex, such that two regions are adjacent if and only if the corresponding vertices are connected by an edge. A rectangular dual is sliceable if it can be recursively subdivided along horizontal or vertical lines. A graph is rectangular if it has a rectangular dual and sliceable if it has a sliceable rectangular dual. There is a clear characterization of rectangular graphs. However, a full characterization of sliceable graphs is still lacking. The currently best result (Yeap and Sarrafzadeh, 1995) proves that all rectangular graphs without a separating 4-cycle are slice- able. In this paper we introduce a recursively defined class of graphs and prove that these graphs are precisely the nonsliceable graphs with exactly one separating 4-cycle.\u3c/p\u3