Bounding a Polygon by a Minimum Number of Vertices

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Abrahamsen, Mikkel, Stade, Jack, Yan, Shuyi, Zhang, Hanwen
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Abrahamsen, Mikkel
Stade, Jack
Yan, Shuyi
Zhang, Hanwen
author_facet Abrahamsen, Mikkel
Stade, Jack
Yan, Shuyi
Zhang, Hanwen
contents Suppose that a polygon $P$ is given as an array containing the vertices in counterclockwise order. We analyze how many vertices (including the index of each of these vertices) we need to know before we can bound $P$, i.e., report a bounded region $R$ in the plane such that $P\subset R$. We show that there exists polygons where $4\log_2 n+O(1)$ vertices are enough, while $\log_3n-o(\log n)$ must always be known. We thus answer the question up to a constant factor. This can be seen as an analysis of the shortest possible certificate or the best-case running time of any algorithm solving a variety of problems involving polygons, where a bound must be known in order to answer correctly. This includes various packing problems such as deciding whether a polygon can be contained inside another polygon.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_04211
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Bounding a Polygon by a Minimum Number of Vertices
Abrahamsen, Mikkel
Stade, Jack
Yan, Shuyi
Zhang, Hanwen
Computational Geometry
Suppose that a polygon $P$ is given as an array containing the vertices in counterclockwise order. We analyze how many vertices (including the index of each of these vertices) we need to know before we can bound $P$, i.e., report a bounded region $R$ in the plane such that $P\subset R$. We show that there exists polygons where $4\log_2 n+O(1)$ vertices are enough, while $\log_3n-o(\log n)$ must always be known. We thus answer the question up to a constant factor. This can be seen as an analysis of the shortest possible certificate or the best-case running time of any algorithm solving a variety of problems involving polygons, where a bound must be known in order to answer correctly. This includes various packing problems such as deciding whether a polygon can be contained inside another polygon.
title Bounding a Polygon by a Minimum Number of Vertices
topic Computational Geometry
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.04211