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David Eppstein

Publications and source records attributed to David Eppstein.

At least 181 records · Page 10Linked to original sources

Drawing Graphs in the Plane with a Prescribed Outer Face and Polynomial Area

We study the classic graph drawing problem of drawing a planar graph using straight-line edges with a prescribed convex polygon as the outer face. Unlike previous algorithms for this problem, which may produce drawings with exponential area, our method produces drawings with polynomial area. In addition, we allow for collinear points on the boundary, provided such vertices do not create overlapping edges. Thus, we solve an open problem of Duncan et al., which, when combined with their work, implies that we can produce a planar straight-line drawing of a combinatorially-embedded genus-g graph with the graph's canonical polygonal schema drawn as a convex polygonal external face.

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Optimal 3D Angular Resolution for Low-Degree Graphs

We show that every graph of maximum degree three can be drawn in three dimensions with at most two bends per edge, and with 120-degree angles between any two edge segments meeting at a vertex or a bend. We show that every graph of maximum degree four can be drawn in three dimensions with at most three bends per edge, and with 109.5-degree angles, i.e., the angular resolution of the diamond lattice, between any two edge segments meeting at a vertex or bend.

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Flows in One-Crossing-Minor-Free Graphs

We study the maximum flow problem in directed H-minor-free graphs where H can be drawn in the plane with one crossing. If a structural decomposition of the graph as a clique-sum of planar graphs and graphs of constant complexity is given, we show that a maximum flow can be computed in O(n log n) time. In particular, maximum flows in directed K_{3,3}-minor-free graphs and directed K_5-minor-free graphs can be computed in O(n log n) time without additional assumptions.

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Regular Labelings and Geometric Structures

Three types of geometric structure---grid triangulations, rectangular subdivisions, and orthogonal polyhedra---can each be described combinatorially by a regular labeling: an assignment of colors and orientations to the edges of an associated maximal or near-maximal planar graph. We briefly survey the connections and analogies between these three kinds of labelings, and their uses in designing efficient geometric algorithms.

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Listing All Maximal Cliques in Sparse Graphs in Near-optimal Time

The degeneracy of an $n$-vertex graph $G$ is the smallest number $d$ such that every subgraph of $G$ contains a vertex of degree at most $d$. We show that there exists a nearly-optimal fixed-parameter tractable algorithm for enumerating all maximal cliques, parametrized by degeneracy. To achieve this result, we modify the classic Bron--Kerbosch algorithm and show that it runs in time $O(dn3^{d/3})$. We also provide matching upper and lower bounds showing that the largest possible number of maximal cliques in an $n$-vertex graph with degeneracy $d$ (when $d$ is a multiple of 3 and $n\ge d+3$) is $(n-d)3^{d/3}$. Therefore, our algorithm matches the $Θ(d(n-d)3^{d/3})$ worst-case output size of the problem whenever $n-d=Ω(n)$.

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Cloning Voronoi Diagrams via Retroactive Data Structures

We address the problem of replicating a Voronoi diagram $V(S)$ of a planar point set $S$ by making proximity queries, which are of three possible (in decreasing order of information content): 1. the exact location of the nearest site(s) in $S$; 2. the distance to and label(s) of the nearest site(s) in $S$; 3. a unique label for every nearest site in $S$. We provide algorithms showing how queries of Type 1 and Type 2 allow an exact cloning of $V(S)$ with $O(n)$ queries and $O(n \log^2 n)$ processing time. We also prove that queries of Type 3 can never exactly clone $V(S)$, but we show that with $O(n \log\frac{1}ε)$ queries we can construct an $ε$-approximate cloning of $V(S)$. In addition to showing the limits of nearest-neighbor database security, our methods also provide one of the first natural algorithmic applications of retroactive data structures.

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Dilation, smoothed distance, and minimization diagrams of convex functions

We study Voronoi diagrams for distance functions that add together two convex functions, each taking as its argument the difference between Cartesian coordinates of two planar points. When the functions do not grow too quickly, then the Voronoi diagram has linear complexity and can be constructed in near-linear randomized expected time. Additionally, the level sets of the distances from the sites form a family of pseudocircles in the plane, all cells in the Voronoi diagram are connected, and the set of bisectors separating any one cell in the diagram from each of the others forms an arrangement of pseudolines in the plane. We apply these results to the smoothed distance or biotope transform metric, a geometric analogue of the Jaccard distance whose Voronoi diagrams can be used to determine the dilation of a star network with a given hub. For sufficiently closely spaced points in the plane, the Voronoi diagram of smoothed distance has linear complexity and can be computed efficiently. We also experiment with a variant of Lloyd's algorithm, adapted to smoothed distance, to find uniformly spaced point samples with exponentially decreasing density around a given point.

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Ramified rectilinear polygons: coordinatization by dendrons

Simple rectilinear polygons (i.e. rectilinear polygons without holes or cutpoints) can be regarded as finite rectangular cell complexes coordinatized by two finite dendrons. The intrinsic $l_1$-metric is thus inherited from the product of the two finite dendrons via an isometric embedding. The rectangular cell complexes that share this same embedding property are called ramified rectilinear polygons. The links of vertices in these cell complexes may be arbitrary bipartite graphs, in contrast to simple rectilinear polygons where the links of points are either 4-cycles or paths of length at most 3. Ramified rectilinear polygons are particular instances of rectangular complexes obtained from cube-free median graphs, or equivalently simply connected rectangular complexes with triangle-free links. The underlying graphs of finite ramified rectilinear polygons can be recognized among graphs in linear time by a Lexicographic Breadth-First-Search. Whereas the symmetry of a simple rectilinear polygon is very restricted (with automorphism group being a subgroup of the dihedral group $D_4$), ramified rectilinear polygons are universal: every finite group is the automorphism group of some ramified rectilinear polygon.

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Happy endings for flip graphs

We show that the triangulations of a finite point set form a flip graph that can be embedded isometrically into a hypercube, if and only if the point set has no empty convex pentagon. Point sets of this type include convex subsets of lattices, points on two lines, and several other infinite families. As a consequence, flip distance in such point sets can be computed efficiently.

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Steinitz Theorems for Orthogonal Polyhedra

We define a simple orthogonal polyhedron to be a three-dimensional polyhedron with the topology of a sphere in which three mutually-perpendicular edges meet at each vertex. By analogy to Steinitz's theorem characterizing the graphs of convex polyhedra, we find graph-theoretic characterizations of three classes of simple orthogonal polyhedra: corner polyhedra, which can be drawn by isometric projection in the plane with only one hidden vertex, xyz polyhedra, in which each axis-parallel line through a vertex contains exactly one other vertex, and arbitrary simple orthogonal polyhedra. In particular, the graphs of xyz polyhedra are exactly the bipartite cubic polyhedral graphs, and every bipartite cubic polyhedral graph with a 4-connected dual graph is the graph of a corner polyhedron. Based on our characterizations we find efficient algorithms for constructing orthogonal polyhedra from their graphs.

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Growth and Decay in Life-Like Cellular Automata

We propose a four-way classification of two-dimensional semi-totalistic cellular automata that is different than Wolfram's, based on two questions with yes-or-no answers: do there exist patterns that eventually escape any finite bounding box placed around them? And do there exist patterns that die out completely? If both of these conditions are true, then a cellular automaton rule is likely to support spaceships, small patterns that move and that form the building blocks of many of the more complex patterns that are known for Life. If one or both of these conditions is not true, then there may still be phenomena of interest supported by the given cellular automaton rule, but we will have to look harder for them. Although our classification is very crude, we argue that it is more objective than Wolfram's (due to the greater ease of determining a rigorous answer to these questions), more predictive (as we can classify large groups of rules without observing them individually), and more accurate in focusing attention on rules likely to support patterns with complex behavior. We support these assertions by surveying a number of known cellular automaton rules.

nlin.CG↗

Going Off-road: Transversal Complexity in Road Networks

A geometric graph is a graph embedded in the plane with vertices at points and edges drawn as curves (which are usually straight line segments) between those points. The average transversal complexity of a geometric graph is the number of edges of that graph that are crossed by random line or line segment. In this paper, we study the average transversal complexity of road networks. By viewing road networks as multiscale-dispersed graphs, we show that a random line will cross the edges of such a graph O(sqrt(n)) times on average. In addition, we provide by empirical evidence from experiments on the road networks of the fifty states of United States and the District of Columbia that this bound holds in practice and has a small constant factor. Combining this result with data structuring techniques from computational geometry, allows us to show that we can then do point location and ray-shooting navigational queries with respect to road networks in O(sqrt(n) log n) expected time. Finally, we provide empirical justification for this claim as well.

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Straggler Identification in Round-Trip Data Streams via Newton's Identities and Invertible Bloom Filters

We introduce the straggler identification problem, in which an algorithm must determine the identities of the remaining members of a set after it has had a large number of insertion and deletion operations performed on it, and now has relatively few remaining members. The goal is to do this in o(n) space, where n is the total number of identities. The straggler identification problem has applications, for example, in determining the set of unacknowledged packets in a high-bandwidth multicast data stream. We provide a deterministic solution to the straggler identification problem that uses only O(d log n) bits and is based on a novel application of Newton's identities for symmetric polynomials. This solution can identify any subset of d stragglers from a set of n O(log n)-bit identifiers, assuming that there are no false deletions of identities not already in the set. Indeed, we give a lower bound argument that shows that any small-space deterministic solution to the straggler identification problem cannot be guaranteed to handle false deletions. Nevertheless, we show that there is a simple randomized solution using O(d log n log(1/epsilon)) bits that can maintain a multiset and solve the straggler identification problem, tolerating false deletions, where epsilon>0 is a user-defined parameter bounding the probability of an incorrect response. This randomized solution is based on a new type of Bloom filter, which we call the invertible Bloom filter.

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Paired approximation problems and incompatible inapproximabilities

This paper considers pairs of optimization problems that are defined from a single input and for which it is desired to find a good approximation to either one of the problems. In many instances, it is possible to efficiently find an approximation of this type that is better than known inapproximability lower bounds for either of the two individual optimization problems forming the pair. In particular, we find either a $(1+ε)$-approximation to $(1,2)$-TSP or a $1/ε$-approximation to maximum independent set, from a given graph, in linear time. We show a similar paired approximation result for finding either a coloring or a long path. However, no such tradeoff exists in some other cases: for set cover and hitting set problems defined from a single set family, and for clique and independent set problems on the same graph, it is not possible to find an approximation when both problems are combined that is better than the best approximation for either problem on its own.

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Graph-Theoretic Solutions to Computational Geometry Problems

Many problems in computational geometry are not stated in graph-theoretic terms, but can be solved efficiently by constructing an auxiliary graph and performing a graph-theoretic algorithm on it. Often, the efficiency of the algorithm depends on the special properties of the graph constructed in this way. We survey the art gallery problem, partition into rectangles, minimum-diameter clustering, rectilinear cartogram construction, mesh stripification, angle optimization in tilings, and metric embedding from this perspective.

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Optimal Angular Resolution for Face-Symmetric Drawings

Let G be a graph that may be drawn in the plane in such a way that all internal faces are centrally symmetric convex polygons. We show how to find a drawing of this type that maximizes the angular resolution of the drawing, the minimum angle between any two incident edges, in polynomial time, by reducing the problem to one of finding parametric shortest paths in an auxiliary graph. The running time is at most O(t^3), where t is a parameter of the input graph that is at most O(n) but is more typically proportional to n^.5.

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Combinatorics and geometry of finite and infinite squaregraphs

Squaregraphs were originally defined as finite plane graphs in which all inner faces are quadrilaterals (i.e., 4-cycles) and all inner vertices (i.e., the vertices not incident with the outer face) have degrees larger than three. The planar dual of a finite squaregraph is determined by a triangle-free chord diagram of the unit disk, which could alternatively be viewed as a triangle-free line arrangement in the hyperbolic plane. This representation carries over to infinite plane graphs with finite vertex degrees in which the balls are finite squaregraphs. Algebraically, finite squaregraphs are median graphs for which the duals are finite circular split systems. Hence squaregraphs are at the crosspoint of two dualities, an algebraic and a geometric one, and thus lend themselves to several combinatorial interpretations and structural characterizations. With these and the 5-colorability theorem for circle graphs at hand, we prove that every squaregraph can be isometrically embedded into the Cartesian product of five trees. This embedding result can also be extended to the infinite case without reference to an embedding in the plane and without any cardinality restriction when formulated for median graphs free of cubes and further finite obstructions. Further, we exhibit a class of squaregraphs that can be embedded into the product of three trees and we characterize those squaregraphs that are embeddable into the product of just two trees. Finally, finite squaregraphs enjoy a number of algorithmic features that do not extend to arbitrary median graphs. For instance, we show that median-generating sets of finite squaregraphs can be computed in polynomial time, whereas, not unexpectedly, the corresponding problem for median graphs turns out to be NP-hard.

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Linear-Time Algorithms for Geometric Graphs with Sublinearly Many Edge Crossings

We provide linear-time algorithms for geometric graphs with sublinearly many crossings. That is, we provide algorithms running in O(n) time on connected geometric graphs having n vertices and k crossings, where k is smaller than n by an iterated logarithmic factor. Specific problems we study include Voronoi diagrams and single-source shortest paths. Our algorithms all run in linear time in the standard comparison-based computational model; hence, we make no assumptions about the distribution or bit complexities of edge weights, nor do we utilize unusual bit-level operations on memory words. Instead, our algorithms are based on a planarization method that "zeroes in" on edge crossings, together with methods for extending planar separator decompositions to geometric graphs with sublinearly many crossings. Incidentally, our planarization algorithm also solves an open computational geometry problem of Chazelle for triangulating a self-intersecting polygonal chain having n segments and k crossings in linear time, for the case when k is sublinear in n by an iterated logarithmic factor.

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