2026-08-17T17:43:01Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:17859 2024-03-06T11:00:32Z ddc:004 open_access

Optimal Volume-Sensitive Bounds for Polytope Approximation Arya, Sunil Mount, David M. Approximation algorithms convexity Macbeath regions Approximating convex bodies is a fundamental question in geometry and has a wide variety of applications. Consider a convex body K of diameter Δ in ℝ^d for fixed d. The objective is to minimize the number of vertices (alternatively, the number of facets) of an approximating polytope for a given Hausdorff error ε. It is known from classical results of Dudley (1974) and Bronshteyn and Ivanov (1976) that Θ((Δ/ε)^{(d-1)/2}) vertices (alternatively, facets) are both necessary and sufficient. While this bound is tight in the worst case, that of Euclidean balls, it is far from optimal for skinny convex bodies. A natural way to characterize a convex object’s skinniness is in terms of its relationship to the Euclidean ball. Given a convex body K, define its volume diameter Δ_d to be the diameter of a Euclidean ball of the same volume as K, and define its surface diameter Δ_{d-1} analogously for surface area. It follows from generalizations of the isoperimetric inequality that Δ ≥ Δ_{d-1} ≥ Δ_d. Arya, da Fonseca, and Mount (SoCG 2012) demonstrated that the diameter-based bound could be made surface-area sensitive, improving the above bound to O((Δ_{d-1}/ε)^{(d-1)/2}). In this paper, we strengthen this by proving the existence of an approximation with O((Δ_d/ε)^{(d-1)/2}) facets. This improvement is a result of the combination of a number of new ideas. As in prior work, we exploit properties of the original body and its polar dual. In order to obtain a volume-sensitive bound, we explore the following more general problem. Given two convex bodies, one nested within the other, find a low-complexity convex polytope that is sandwiched between them. We show that this problem can be reduced to a covering problem involving a natural intermediate body based on the harmonic mean. Our proof relies on a geometric analysis of a relative notion of fatness involving these bodies. Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Sunil Arya and David M. Mount 2023 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 258, 39th International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2023) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2023.9 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-178592 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2023.9 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode