Minimum Convex Partitions and Maximum Empty Polytopes

Let $S$ be a set of $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^d$. A Steiner convex partition is a tiling of ${\rm conv}(S)$ with empty convex bodies. For every integer $d$, we show that $S$ admits a Steiner convex partition with at most $\lceil (n-1)/d\rceil$ tiles. This bound is the best possible for points in general position in the plane, and it is best possible apart from constant factors in every fixed dimension $d\geq 3$. We also give the first constant-factor approximation algorithm for computing a minimum Steiner convex partition of a planar point set in general position. Establishing a tight lower bound for the maximum volume of a tile in a Steiner convex partition of any $n$ points in the unit cube is equivalent to a famous problem of Danzer and Rogers. It is conjectured that the volume of the largest tile is $\omega(1/n)$. Here we give a $(1-\varepsilon)$-approximation algorithm for computing the maximum volume of an empty convex body amidst $n$ given points in the $d$-dimensional unit box $[0,1]^d$.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figures; revised write-up with some running times improve

Random Weighting, Asymptotic Counting, and Inverse Isoperimetry

For a family X of k-subsets of the set 1,...,n, let |X| be the cardinality of X and let Gamma(X,mu) be the expected maximum weight of a subset from X when the weights of 1,...,n are chosen independently at random from a symmetric probability distribution mu on R. We consider the inverse isoperimetric problem of finding mu for which Gamma(X,mu) gives the best estimate of ln|X|. We prove that the optimal choice of mu is the logistic distribution, in which case Gamma(X,mu) provides an asymptotically tight estimate of ln|X| as k^{-1}ln|X| grows. Since in many important cases Gamma(X,mu) can be easily computed, we obtain computationally efficient approximation algorithms for a variety of counting problems. Given mu, we describe families X of a given cardinality with the minimum value of Gamma(X,mu), thus extending and sharpening various isoperimetric inequalities in the Boolean cube.Comment: The revision contains a new isoperimetric theorem, some other improvements and extensions; 29 pages, 1 figur

Dense point sets have sparse Delaunay triangulations

The spread of a finite set of points is the ratio between the longest and shortest pairwise distances. We prove that the Delaunay triangulation of any set of n points in R^3 with spread D has complexity O(D^3). This bound is tight in the worst case for all D = O(sqrt{n}). In particular, the Delaunay triangulation of any dense point set has linear complexity. We also generalize this upper bound to regular triangulations of k-ply systems of balls, unions of several dense point sets, and uniform samples of smooth surfaces. On the other hand, for any n and D=O(n), we construct a regular triangulation of complexity Omega(nD) whose n vertices have spread D.Comment: 31 pages, 11 figures. Full version of SODA 2002 paper. Also available at http://www.cs.uiuc.edu/~jeffe/pubs/screw.htm