Wednesday, April 8, 1998
Due: Friday, April 17, 1998
Dual of Convex Hull Algorithms
This assignment is a bit special: it is not not just about
solving a problem or two, but also about presenting your
solution. It is meant to give you some practice, useful for the final
presentation of your project at the end of the semester.
Topics
In class, I explained the point/line duality and we've seen that
questions about configurations of points dualize to questions
about line arrangements. The purpose of this homework assignment
is to have each of you "implement" these ideas by dualizing one
of the 2d convex hulls algorithms we did in class, to an
algorithm computing the upper envelope of a set of lines.
Translate the corresponding algorithm into an algorithm for
computing the upper envelope of a set of lines. Present the
algorithm, in the dual setting, in a short 10 minute presentation
on Friday April 17. The presentation should include a very short description
of the problem, a dictionaru of dual concept used for dualizing
the algorithm, and a presentation of the algorithm in parallel
with the original primal one.
Since this is practice for the final presentation, you can use
whatever form of presentation you feel more comfortable with. It
can be done using just plain blackboard and chalk, or using an
overhead projector (just let me know ahead of time so that I
bring one to class), or from computer slides (e.g., html files,
Powerpoint - whatever).
I also ask you to write the main ideas in the form of an HTML
file, but since drawing the pictures may be time consuming, I do
not require that you include computer generated images with your
HTML presentation (unless you want to).
Ileana Streinu