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

On the Number of Maximum Empty Boxes Amidst n Points

We revisit the following problem (along with its higher dimensional variant): Given a set S of n points inside an axis-parallel rectangle U in the plane, find a maximum-area axis-parallel sub-rectangle that is contained in U but contains no points of S. 1. We prove that the number of maximum-area empty rectangles amidst n points in the plane is O(n log n 2^alpha(n)), where alpha(n) is the extremely slowly growing inverse of Ackermann\u27s function. The previous best bound, O(n^2), is due to Naamad, Lee, and Hsu (1984). 2. For any d at least 3, we prove that the number of maximum-volume empty boxes amidst n points in R^d is always O(n^d) and sometimes Omega(n^floor(d/2)). This is the first superlinear lower bound derived for this problem. 3. We discuss some algorithmic aspects regarding the search for a maximum empty box in R^3. In particular, we present an algorithm that finds a (1-epsilon)-approximation of the maximum empty box amidst n points in O(epsilon^{-2} n^{5/3} log^2{n}) time