2026-08-18T03:23:08Z https://drops.dagstuhl.de/oai

oai:drops-oai.dagstuhl.de:5952 2024-03-06T10:37:21Z ddc:004 open_access

Applications of Incidence Bounds in Point Covering Problems Afshani, Peyman Berglin, Edvin van Duijn, Ingo Sindahl Nielsen, Jesper Point Cover Incidence Bounds Inclusion Exclusion Exponential Algorithm In the Line Cover problem a set of n points is given and the task is to cover the points using either the minimum number of lines or at most k lines. In Curve Cover, a generalization of Line Cover, the task is to cover the points using curves with d degrees of freedom. Another generalization is the Hyperplane Cover problem where points in d-dimensional space are to be covered by hyperplanes. All these problems have kernels of polynomial size, where the parameter is the minimum number of lines, curves, or hyperplanes needed. First we give a non-parameterized algorithm for both problems in O*(2^n) (where the O*(.) notation hides polynomial factors of n) time and polynomial space, beating a previous exponential-space result. Combining this with incidence bounds similar to the famous Szemeredi-Trotter bound, we present a Curve Cover algorithm with running time O*((Ck/log k)^((d-1)k)), where C is some constant. Our result improves the previous best times O*((k/1.35)^k) for Line Cover (where d=2), O*(k^(dk)) for general Curve Cover, as well as a few other bounds for covering points by parabolas or conics. We also present an algorithm for Hyperplane Cover in R^3 with running time O*((Ck^2/log^(1/5) k)^k), improving on the previous time of O*((k^2/1.3)^k). Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik Peyman Afshani and Edvin Berglin and Ingo van Duijn and Jesper Sindahl Nielsen 2016 Is Part Of LIPIcs, Volume 51, 32nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG 2016) InProceedings Text doc-type:ResearchArticle publishedVersion application/pdf doi:10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2016.60 urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-59527 https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SoCG.2016.60 eng https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/legalcode