arXiv subjects
Publications and source records attributed to Stephen G. Kobourov.
We study balanced circle packings and circle-contact representations for planar graphs, where the ratio of the largest circle's diameter to the smallest circle's diameter is polynomial in the number of circles. We provide a number of positive and negative results for the existence of such balanced configurations.
We study a graph coloring problem motivated by a fun Sudoku-style puzzle. Given a bipartition of the edges of a graph into {\em near} and {\em far} sets and an integer threshold $t$, a {\em threshold-coloring} of the graph is an assignment of integers to the vertices so that endpoints of near edges differ by $t$ or less, while endpoints of far edges differ by more than $t$. We study threshold-coloring of tilings of the plane by regular polygons, known as Archimedean lattices, and their duals, the Laves lattices. We prove that some are threshold-colorable with constant number of colors for any edge labeling, some require an unbounded number of colors for specific labelings, and some are not threshold-colorable.
In \emph{smooth orthogonal layouts} of planar graphs, every edge is an alternating sequence of axis-aligned segments and circular arcs with common axis-aligned tangents. In this paper, we study the problem of finding smooth orthogonal layouts of low \emph{edge complexity}, that is, with few segments per edge. We say that a graph has \emph{smooth complexity} k---for short, an SC_k-layout---if it admits a smooth orthogonal drawing of edge complexity at most $k$. Our main result is that every 4-planar graph has an SC_2-layout. While our drawings may have super-polynomial area, we show that, for 3-planar graphs, cubic area suffices. Further, we show that every biconnected 4-outerplane graph admits an SC_1-layout. On the negative side, we demonstrate an infinite family of biconnected 4-planar graphs that requires exponential area for an SC_1-layout. Finally, we present an infinite family of biconnected 4-planar graphs that does not admit an SC_1-layout.
In this paper we study threshold coloring of graphs, where the vertex colors represented by integers are used to describe any spanning subgraph of the given graph as follows. Pairs of vertices with near colors imply the edge between them is present and pairs of vertices with far colors imply the edge is absent. Not all planar graphs are threshold-colorable, but several subclasses, such as trees, some planar grids, and planar graphs without short cycles can always be threshold-colored. Using these results we obtain unit-cube contact representation of several subclasses of planar graphs. Variants of the threshold coloring problem are related to well-known graph coloring and other graph-theoretic problems. Using these relations we show the NP-completeness for two of these variants, and describe a polynomial-time algorithm for another.
We describe a practical approach for visual exploration of research papers. Specifically, we use the titles of papers from the DBLP database to create what we call maps of computer science (MoCS). Words and phrases from the paper titles are the cities in the map, and countries are created based on word and phrase similarity, calculated using co-occurrence. With the help of heatmaps, we can visualize the profile of a particular conference or journal over the base map. Similarly, heatmap profiles can be made of individual researchers or groups such as a department. The visualization system also makes it possible to change the data used to generate the base map. For example, a specific journal or conference can be used to generate the base map and then the heatmap overlays can be used to show the evolution of research topics in the field over the years. As before, individual researchers or research groups profiles can be visualized using heatmap overlays but this time over the journal or conference base map. Finally, research papers or abstracts easily generate visual abstracts giving a visual representation of the distribution of topics in the paper. We outline a modular and extensible system for term extraction using natural language processing techniques, and show the applicability of methods of information retrieval to calculation of term similarity and creation of a topic map. The system is available at mocs.cs.arizona.edu.
We present a new circular-arc cartogram model in which countries are drawn as polygons with circular arcs instead of straight-line segments. Given a political map and values associated with each country in the map, a cartogram is a distorted map in which the areas of the countries are proportional to the corresponding values. In the circular-arc cartogram model straight-line segments can be replaced by circular arcs in order to modify the areas of the polygons, while the corners of the polygons remain fixed. The countries in circular-arc cartograms have the aesthetically pleasing appearance of clouds or snowflakes, depending on whether their edges are bent outwards or inwards. This makes it easy to determine whether a country has grown or shrunk, just by its overall shape. We show that determining whether a given map and given area-values can be realized as a circular-arc cartogram is an NP-hard problem. Next we describe a heuristic method for constructing circular-arc cartograms, which uses a max-flow computation on the dual graph of the map, along with a computation of the straight skeleton of the underlying polygonal decomposition. Our method is implemented and produces cartograms that, while not yet perfectly accurate, achieve many of the desired areas in our real-world examples.
Force-directed algorithms are among the most flexible methods for calculating layouts of simple undirected graphs. Also known as spring embedders, such algorithms calculate the layout of a graph using only information contained within the structure of the graph itself, rather than relying on domain-specific knowledge. Graphs drawn with these algorithms tend to be aesthetically pleasing, exhibit symmetries, and tend to produce crossing-free layouts for planar graphs. In this survey we consider several classical algorithms, starting from Tutte's 1963 barycentric method, and including recent scalable multiscale methods for large and dynamic graphs.
In a rectilinear dual of a planar graph vertices are represented by simple rectilinear polygons and edges are represented by side-contact between the corresponding polygons. A rectilinear dual is called a cartogram if the area of each region is equal to a pre-specified weight of the corresponding vertex. The complexity of a cartogram is determined by the maximum number of corners (or sides) required for any polygon. In a series of papers the polygonal complexity of such representations for maximal planar graphs has been reduced from the initial 40 to 34, then to 12 and very recently to the currently best known 10. Here we describe a construction with 8-sided polygons, which is optimal in terms of polygonal complexity as 8-sided polygons are sometimes necessary. Specifically, we show how to compute the combinatorial structure and how to refine the representation into an area-universal rectangular layout in linear time. The exact cartogram can be computed from the area-universal rectangular layout with numerical iteration, or can be approximated with a hill-climbing heuristic. We also describe an alternative construction for Hamiltonian maximal planar graphs, which allows us to directly compute the cartograms in linear time. Moreover, we prove that even for Hamiltonian graphs 8-sided rectilinear polygons are necessary, by constructing a non-trivial lower bound example. The complexity of the cartograms can be reduced to 6 if the Hamiltonian path has the extra property that it is one-legged, as in outer-planar graphs. Thus, we have optimal representations (in terms of both polygonal complexity and running time) for Hamiltonian maximal planar and maximal outer-planar graphs.
In Lombardi drawings of graphs, edges are represented as circular arcs, and the edges incident on vertices have perfect angular resolution. However, not every graph has a Lombardi drawing, and not every planar graph has a planar Lombardi drawing. We introduce k-Lombardi drawings, in which each edge may be drawn with k circular arcs, noting that every graph has a smooth 2-Lombardi drawing. We show that every planar graph has a smooth planar 3-Lombardi drawing and further investigate topics connecting planarity and Lombardi drawings.
In this paper, we consider the problem of representing graphs by polygons whose sides touch. We show that at least six sides per polygon are necessary by constructing a class of planar graphs that cannot be represented by pentagons. We also show that the lower bound of six sides is matched by an upper bound of six sides with a linear-time algorithm for representing any planar graph by touching hexagons. Moreover, our algorithm produces convex polygons with edges having at most three slopes and with all vertices lying on an O(n)xO(n) grid.
We introduce the notion of Lombardi graph drawings, named after the American abstract artist Mark Lombardi. In these drawings, edges are represented as circular arcs rather than as line segments or polylines, and the vertices have perfect angular resolution: the edges are equally spaced around each vertex. We describe algorithms for finding Lombardi drawings of regular graphs, graphs of bounded degeneracy, and certain families of planar graphs.
In this paper, we consider the problem of representing graphs by triangles whose sides touch. As a simple necessary condition, we show that pairs of vertices must have a small common neighborhood. On the positive side, we present linear time algorithms for creating touching triangle representations for outerplanar graphs, square grid graphs, and hexagonal grid graphs. We note that this class of graphs is not closed under minors, making characterization difficult. However, we present a complete characterization of the subclass of biconnected graphs that can be represented as triangulations of some polygon.
In this paper, we give polynomial-time algorithms that can take a graph G with a given combinatorial embedding on an orientable surface S of genus g and produce a planar drawing of G in R^2, with a bounding face defined by a polygonal schema P for S. Our drawings are planar, but they allow for multiple copies of vertices and edges on P's boundary, which is a common way of visualizing higher-genus graphs in the plane. Our drawings can be defined with respect to either a canonical polygonal schema or a polygonal cutset schema, which provides an interesting tradeoff, since canonical schemas have fewer sides, and have a nice topological structure, but they can have many more repeated vertices and edges than general polygonal cutsets. As a side note, we show that it is NP-complete to determine whether a given graph embedded in a genus-g surface has a set of 2g fundamental cycles with vertex-disjoint interiors, which would be desirable from a graph-drawing perspective.
Information visualization is essential in making sense out of large data sets. Often, high-dimensional data are visualized as a collection of points in 2-dimensional space through dimensionality reduction techniques. However, these traditional methods often do not capture well the underlying structural information, clustering, and neighborhoods. In this paper, we describe GMap: a practical tool for visualizing relational data with geographic-like maps. We illustrate the effectiveness of this approach with examples from several domains All the maps referenced in this paper can be found in http://www.research.att.com/~yifanhu/GMap
We prove that the geometric thickness of graphs whose maximum degree is no more than four is two. All of our algorithms run in O(n) time, where n is the number of vertices in the graph. In our proofs, we present an embedding algorithm for graphs with maximum degree three that uses an n x n grid and a more complex algorithm for embedding a graph with maximum degree four. We also show a variation using orthogonal edges for maximum degree four graphs that also uses an n x n grid. The results have implications in graph theory, graph drawing, and VLSI design.
This paper addresses the problem of finding shortest paths homotopic to a given disjoint set of paths that wind amongst point obstacles in the plane. We present a faster algorithm than previously known.