37 research outputs found
Making Triangles Colorful
We prove that for any point set P in the plane, a triangle T, and a positive
integer k, there exists a coloring of P with k colors such that any homothetic
copy of T containing at least ck^8 points of P, for some constant c, contains
at least one of each color. This is the first polynomial bound for range spaces
induced by homothetic polygons. The only previously known bound for this
problem applies to the more general case of octants in R^3, but is doubly
exponential.Comment: 6 page
Coloring Hypergraphs Induced by Dynamic Point Sets and Bottomless Rectangles
We consider a coloring problem on dynamic, one-dimensional point sets: points
appearing and disappearing on a line at given times. We wish to color them with
k colors so that at any time, any sequence of p(k) consecutive points, for some
function p, contains at least one point of each color.
We prove that no such function p(k) exists in general. However, in the
restricted case in which points appear gradually, but never disappear, we give
a coloring algorithm guaranteeing the property at any time with p(k)=3k-2. This
can be interpreted as coloring point sets in R^2 with k colors such that any
bottomless rectangle containing at least 3k-2 points contains at least one
point of each color. Here a bottomless rectangle is an axis-aligned rectangle
whose bottom edge is below the lowest point of the set. For this problem, we
also prove a lower bound p(k)>ck, where c>1.67. Hence for every k there exists
a point set, every k-coloring of which is such that there exists a bottomless
rectangle containing ck points and missing at least one of the k colors.
Chen et al. (2009) proved that no such function exists in the case of
general axis-aligned rectangles. Our result also complements recent results
from Keszegh and Palvolgyi on cover-decomposability of octants (2011, 2012).Comment: A preliminary version was presented by a subset of the authors to the
European Workshop on Computational Geometry, held in Assisi (Italy) on March
19-21, 201
Piercing axis-parallel boxes
Let \F be a finite family of axis-parallel boxes in such that \F
contains no pairwise disjoint boxes. We prove that if \F contains a
subfamily \M of pairwise disjoint boxes with the property that for every
F\in \F and M\in \M with , either contains a
corner of or contains corners of , then \F can be
pierced by points. One consequence of this result is that if and
the ratio between any of the side lengths of any box is bounded by a constant,
then \F can be pierced by points. We further show that if for each two
intersecting boxes in \F a corner of one is contained in the other, then \F
can be pierced by at most points, and in the special case
where \F contains only cubes this bound improves to
Making Octants Colorful and Related Covering Decomposition Problems
We give new positive results on the long-standing open problem of geometric
covering decomposition for homothetic polygons. In particular, we prove that
for any positive integer k, every finite set of points in R^3 can be colored
with k colors so that every translate of the negative octant containing at
least k^6 points contains at least one of each color. The best previously known
bound was doubly exponential in k. This yields, among other corollaries, the
first polynomial bound for the decomposability of multiple coverings by
homothetic triangles. We also investigate related decomposition problems
involving intervals appearing on a line. We prove that no algorithm can
dynamically maintain a decomposition of a multiple covering by intervals under
insertion of new intervals, even in a semi-online model, in which some coloring
decisions can be delayed. This implies that a wide range of sweeping plane
algorithms cannot guarantee any bound even for special cases of the octant
problem.Comment: version after revision process; minor changes in the expositio
On interference among moving sensors and related problems
We show that for any set of points moving along "simple" trajectories
(i.e., each coordinate is described with a polynomial of bounded degree) in
and any parameter , one can select a fixed non-empty
subset of the points of size , such that the Voronoi diagram of
this subset is "balanced" at any given time (i.e., it contains points
per cell). We also show that the bound is near optimal even for
the one dimensional case in which points move linearly in time. As
applications, we show that one can assign communication radii to the sensors of
a network of moving sensors so that at any given time their interference is
. We also show some results in kinetic approximate range
counting and kinetic discrepancy. In order to obtain these results, we extend
well-known results from -net theory to kinetic environments
Small Strong Epsilon Nets
Let P be a set of n points in . A point x is said to be a
centerpoint of P if x is contained in every convex object that contains more
than points of P. We call a point x a strong centerpoint for a
family of objects if is contained in every object that contains more than a constant fraction of points of P. A
strong centerpoint does not exist even for halfspaces in . We
prove that a strong centerpoint exists for axis-parallel boxes in
and give exact bounds. We then extend this to small strong
-nets in the plane and prove upper and lower bounds for
where is the family of axis-parallel
rectangles, halfspaces and disks. Here represents the
smallest real number in such that there exists an
-net of size i with respect to .Comment: 19 pages, 12 figure