No Arabic abstract
We say that a finite set of red and blue points in the plane in general position can be $K_{1,3}$-covered if the set can be partitioned into subsets of size $4$, with $3$ points of one color and $1$ point of the other color, in such a way that, if at each subset the fourth point is connected by straight-line segments to the same-colored points, then the resulting set of all segments has no crossings. We consider the following problem: Given a set $R$ of $r$ red points and a set $B$ of $b$ blue points in the plane in general position, how many points of $Rcup B$ can be $K_{1,3}$-covered? and we prove the following results: (1) If $r=3g+h$ and $b=3h+g$, for some non-negative integers $g$ and $h$, then there are point sets $Rcup B$, like ${1,3}$-equitable sets (i.e., $r=3b$ or $b=3r$) and linearly separable sets, that can be $K_{1,3}$-covered. (2) If $r=3g+h$, $b=3h+g$ and the points in $Rcup B$ are in convex position, then at least $r+b-4$ points can be $K_{1,3}$-covered, and this bound is tight. (3) There are arbitrarily large point sets $Rcup B$ in general position, with $r=b+1$, such that at most $r+b-5$ points can be $K_{1,3}$-covered. (4) If $ble rle 3b$, then at least $frac{8}{9}(r+b-8)$ points of $Rcup B$ can be $K_{1,3}$-covered. For $r>3b$, there are too many red points and at least $r-3b$ of them will remain uncovered in any $K_{1,3}$-covering. Furthermore, in all the cases we provide efficient algorithms to compute the corresponding coverings.
Given a set R of red points and a set B of blue points in the plane, the Red-Blue point separation problem asks if there are at most k lines that separate R from B, that is, each cell induced by the lines of the solution is either empty or monochromatic (containing points of only one color). A common variant of the problem is when the lines are required to be axis-parallel. The problem is known to be NP-complete for both scenarios, and W[1]-hard parameterized by k in the former setting and FPT in the latter. We demonstrate a polynomial-time algorithm for the special case when the points lie on a circle. Further, we also demonstrate the W-hardness of a related problem in the axis-parallel setting, where the question is if there are p horizontal and q vertical lines that separate R from B. The hardness here is shown in the parameter p.
In the Metric Capacitated Covering (MCC) problem, given a set of balls $mathcal{B}$ in a metric space $P$ with metric $d$ and a capacity parameter $U$, the goal is to find a minimum sized subset $mathcal{B}subseteq mathcal{B}$ and an assignment of the points in $P$ to the balls in $mathcal{B}$ such that each point is assigned to a ball that contains it and each ball is assigned with at most $U$ points. MCC achieves an $O(log |P|)$-approximation using a greedy algorithm. On the other hand, it is hard to approximate within a factor of $o(log |P|)$ even with $beta < 3$ factor expansion of the balls. Bandyapadhyay~{et al.} [SoCG 2018, DCG 2019] showed that one can obtain an $O(1)$-approximation for the problem with $6.47$ factor expansion of the balls. An open question left by their work is to reduce the gap between the lower bound $3$ and the upper bound $6.47$. In this current work, we show that it is possible to obtain an $O(1)$-approximation with only $4.24$ factor expansion of the balls. We also show a similar upper bound of $5$ for a more generalized version of MCC for which the best previously known bound was $9$.
Let $p(m)$ (respectively, $q(m)$) be the maximum number $k$ such that any tree with $m$ edges can be transformed by contracting edges (respectively, by removing vertices) into a caterpillar with $k$ edges. We derive closed-form expressions for $p(m)$ and $q(m)$ for all $m ge 1$. The two functions $p(n)$ and $q(n)$ can also be interpreted in terms of alternating paths among $n$ disjoint line segments in the plane, whose $2n$ endpoints are in convex position.
Let $L$ be a set of $n$ lines in $R^3$ that is contained, when represented as points in the four-dimensional Plucker space of lines in $R^3$, in an irreducible variety $T$ of constant degree which is emph{non-degenerate} with respect to $L$ (see below). We show: medskip oindent{bf (1)} If $T$ is two-dimensional, the number of $r$-rich points (points incident to at least $r$ lines of $L$) is $O(n^{4/3+epsilon}/r^2)$, for $r ge 3$ and for any $epsilon>0$, and, if at most $n^{1/3}$ lines of $L$ lie on any common regulus, there are at most $O(n^{4/3+epsilon})$ $2$-rich points. For $r$ larger than some sufficiently large constant, the number of $r$-rich points is also $O(n/r)$. As an application, we deduce (with an $epsilon$-loss in the exponent) the bound obtained by Pach and de Zeeuw (2107) on the number of distinct distances determined by $n$ points on an irreducible algebraic curve of constant degree in the plane that is not a line nor a circle. medskip oindent{bf (2)} If $T$ is two-dimensional, the number of incidences between $L$ and a set of $m$ points in $R^3$ is $O(m+n)$. medskip oindent{bf (3)} If $T$ is three-dimensional and nonlinear, the number of incidences between $L$ and a set of $m$ points in $R^3$ is $Oleft(m^{3/5}n^{3/5} + (m^{11/15}n^{2/5} + m^{1/3}n^{2/3})s^{1/3} + m + n right)$, provided that no plane contains more than $s$ of the points. When $s = O(min{n^{3/5}/m^{2/5}, m^{1/2}})$, the bound becomes $O(m^{3/5}n^{3/5}+m+n)$. As an application, we prove that the number of incidences between $m$ points and $n$ lines in $R^4$ contained in a quadratic hypersurface (which does not contain a hyperplane) is $O(m^{3/5}n^{3/5} + m + n)$. The proofs use, in addition to various tools from algebraic geometry, recent bounds on the number of incidences between points and algebraic curves in the plane.
It is proved that triangle-free intersection graphs of $n$ L-shapes in the plane have chromatic number $O(loglog n)$. This improves the previous bound of $O(log n)$ (McGuinness, 1996) and matches the known lower bound construction (Pawlik et al., 2013).