In the Line Cover problem a set of n points is given and the task is to cover
the points using either the minimum number of lines or at most k lines. In
Curve Cover, a generalization of Line Cover, the task is to cover the points
using curves with d degrees of freedom. Another generalization is the
Hyperplane Cover problem where points in d-dimensional space are to be covered
by hyperplanes. All these problems have kernels of polynomial size, where the
parameter is the minimum number of lines, curves, or hyperplanes needed. First
we give a non-parameterized algorithm for both problems in O*(2^n) (where the
O*(.) notation hides polynomial factors of n) time and polynomial space,
beating a previous exponential-space result. Combining this with incidence
bounds similar to the famous Szemeredi-Trotter bound, we present a Curve Cover
algorithm with running time O*((Ck/log k)^((d-1)k)), where C is some constant.
Our result improves the previous best times O*((k/1.35)^k) for Line Cover
(where d=2), O*(k^(dk)) for general Curve Cover, as well as a few other bounds
for covering points by parabolas or conics. We also present an algorithm for
Hyperplane Cover in R^3 with running time O*((Ck^2/log^(1/5) k)^k), improving
on the previous time of O*((k^2/1.3)^k).Comment: SoCG 201
