28 research outputs found
Self-Improving Algorithms
We investigate ways in which an algorithm can improve its expected
performance by fine-tuning itself automatically with respect to an unknown
input distribution D. We assume here that D is of product type. More precisely,
suppose that we need to process a sequence I_1, I_2, ... of inputs I = (x_1,
x_2, ..., x_n) of some fixed length n, where each x_i is drawn independently
from some arbitrary, unknown distribution D_i. The goal is to design an
algorithm for these inputs so that eventually the expected running time will be
optimal for the input distribution D = D_1 * D_2 * ... * D_n.
We give such self-improving algorithms for two problems: (i) sorting a
sequence of numbers and (ii) computing the Delaunay triangulation of a planar
point set. Both algorithms achieve optimal expected limiting complexity. The
algorithms begin with a training phase during which they collect information
about the input distribution, followed by a stationary regime in which the
algorithms settle to their optimized incarnations.Comment: 26 pages, 8 figures, preliminary versions appeared at SODA 2006 and
SoCG 2008. Thorough revision to improve the presentation of the pape
A Static Optimality Transformation with Applications to Planar Point Location
Over the last decade, there have been several data structures that, given a
planar subdivision and a probability distribution over the plane, provide a way
for answering point location queries that is fine-tuned for the distribution.
All these methods suffer from the requirement that the query distribution must
be known in advance.
We present a new data structure for point location queries in planar
triangulations. Our structure is asymptotically as fast as the optimal
structures, but it requires no prior information about the queries. This is a
2D analogue of the jump from Knuth's optimum binary search trees (discovered in
1971) to the splay trees of Sleator and Tarjan in 1985. While the former need
to know the query distribution, the latter are statically optimal. This means
that we can adapt to the query sequence and achieve the same asymptotic
performance as an optimum static structure, without needing any additional
information.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figure, a preliminary version appeared at SoCG 201
Multilevel Solvers for Unstructured Surface Meshes
Parameterization of unstructured surface meshes is of fundamental importance in many applications of digital geometry processing. Such parameterization approaches give rise to large and exceedingly ill-conditioned systems which are difficult or impossible to solve without the use of sophisticated multilevel preconditioning strategies. Since the underlying meshes are very fine to begin with, such multilevel preconditioners require mesh coarsening to build an appropriate hierarchy. In this paper we consider several strategies for the construction of hierarchies using ideas from mesh simplification algorithms used in the computer graphics literature. We introduce two novel hierarchy construction schemes and demonstrate their superior performance when used in conjunction with a multigrid preconditioner
Distance-Sensitive Planar Point Location
Let be a connected planar polygonal subdivision with edges
that we want to preprocess for point-location queries, and where we are given
the probability that the query point lies in a polygon of
. We show how to preprocess such that the query time
for a point~ depends on~ and, in addition, on the distance
from to the boundary of~---the further away from the boundary, the
faster the query. More precisely, we show that a point-location query can be
answered in time , where
is the shortest Euclidean distance of the query point~ to the
boundary of . Our structure uses space and
preprocessing time. It is based on a decomposition of the regions of
into convex quadrilaterals and triangles with the following
property: for any point , the quadrilateral or triangle
containing~ has area . For the special case where
is a subdivision of the unit square and
, we present a simpler solution that achieves a
query time of . The latter solution can be extended to
convex subdivisions in three dimensions
Entropy, Triangulation, and Point Location in Planar Subdivisions
A data structure is presented for point location in connected planar
subdivisions when the distribution of queries is known in advance. The data
structure has an expected query time that is within a constant factor of
optimal. More specifically, an algorithm is presented that preprocesses a
connected planar subdivision G of size n and a query distribution D to produce
a point location data structure for G. The expected number of point-line
comparisons performed by this data structure, when the queries are distributed
according to D, is H + O(H^{2/3}+1) where H=H(G,D) is a lower bound on the
expected number of point-line comparisons performed by any linear decision tree
for point location in G under the query distribution D. The preprocessing
algorithm runs in O(n log n) time and produces a data structure of size O(n).
These results are obtained by creating a Steiner triangulation of G that has
near-minimum entropy.Comment: 19 pages, 4 figures, lots of formula
Complexity of projected images of convex subdivisions
AbstractLet S be a subdivision of Rd into n convex regions. We consider the combinatorial complexity of the image of the (k - 1)-skeleton of S orthogonally projected into a k-dimensional subspace. We give an upper bound of the complexity of the projected image by reducing it to the complexity of an arrangement of polytopes. If k = d − 1, we construct a subdivision whose projected image has Ω(n⌊(3d−2)/2⌋) complexity, which is tight when d ⩽ 4. We also investigate the number of topological changes of the projected image when a three-dimensional subdivision is rotated about a line parallel to the projection plane