The algorithmic Fried Potato Problem in two dimensions

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Criado, Francisco, Santos, Francisco
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Criado, Francisco
Santos, Francisco
author_facet Criado, Francisco
Santos, Francisco
contents Conway's Fried Potato Problem seeks to determine the best way to cut a convex body in $n$ parts by $n-1$ hyperplane cuts (with the restriction that the $i$-th cut only divides in two one of the parts obtained so far), in a way as to minimize the maxuimum of the inradii of the parts. It was shown by Bezdek and Bezdek that the solution is always attained by $n-1$ parallel cuts. But the algorithmic problem of finding the best direction for these parallel cuts remains. In this note we show that for a convex $m$-gon $P$, this direction (and hence the cuts themselves) can be found in time $O(m \log^4 m)$, which improves on a quadratic algorithm proposed by Cañete-Fernández-Márquez (DMD 2022). Our algorithm first preprocesses what we call the dome (closely related to the medial axis) of $P$ using a variant of the Dobkin-Kirkpatrick hierarchy, so that linear programs in the dome and in slices of it can be solved in polylogarithmic time.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_13873
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The algorithmic Fried Potato Problem in two dimensions
Criado, Francisco
Santos, Francisco
Metric Geometry
Computational Geometry
52B55, 52A40, 68Q25
Conway's Fried Potato Problem seeks to determine the best way to cut a convex body in $n$ parts by $n-1$ hyperplane cuts (with the restriction that the $i$-th cut only divides in two one of the parts obtained so far), in a way as to minimize the maxuimum of the inradii of the parts. It was shown by Bezdek and Bezdek that the solution is always attained by $n-1$ parallel cuts. But the algorithmic problem of finding the best direction for these parallel cuts remains. In this note we show that for a convex $m$-gon $P$, this direction (and hence the cuts themselves) can be found in time $O(m \log^4 m)$, which improves on a quadratic algorithm proposed by Cañete-Fernández-Márquez (DMD 2022). Our algorithm first preprocesses what we call the dome (closely related to the medial axis) of $P$ using a variant of the Dobkin-Kirkpatrick hierarchy, so that linear programs in the dome and in slices of it can be solved in polylogarithmic time.
title The algorithmic Fried Potato Problem in two dimensions
topic Metric Geometry
Computational Geometry
52B55, 52A40, 68Q25
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.13873