Polytopes And Discrete Geometry

The papers showcase the breadth of discrete geometry through many new methods and results in a variety of topics. Also included are survey articles on some important areas of active research. This volume is aimed at researchers in discrete and convex geometry and researchers who work with abstract polytopes or string C C-groups. It is also aimed at early career mathematicians, including graduate students and postdoctoral fellows, to give them a glimpse of the variety and beauty of these research areas. Topics covered in this volume include: the combinatorics, geometry, and symmetries of convex polytopes; tilings; discrete point sets; the combinatorics of Eulerian posets and interval posets; symmetries of surfaces and maps on surfaces; self-dual polytopes; string C C-groups; hypertopes; and graph coloring.

The main topics in this introductory text to discrete geometry include basics on convex sets, convex polytopes and hyperplane arrangements, combinatorial complexity of geometric configurations, intersection patterns and transversals of convex sets, geometric Ramsey-type results, and embeddings of finite metric spaces into normed spaces. In each area, the text explains several key results and methods.

Celebrating the work of Professor W. Kuperberg, this reference explores packing and covering theory, tilings, combinatorial and computational geometry, and convexity, featuring an extensive collection of problems compiled at the Discrete Geometry Special Session of the American Mathematical Society in New Orleans, Louisiana. Discrete Geometry analy

This richly illustrated textbook explores the amazing interaction between combinatorics, geometry, number theory, and analysis which arises in the interplay between polyhedra and lattices. Highly accessible to advanced undergraduates, as well as beginning graduate students, this second edition is perfect for a capstone course, and adds two new chapters, many new exercises, and updated open problems. For scientists, this text can be utilized as a self-contained tooling device. The topics include a friendly invitation to Ehrhart’s theory of counting lattice points in polytopes, finite Fourier analysis, the Frobenius coin-exchange problem, Dedekind sums, solid angles, Euler–Maclaurin summation for polytopes, computational geometry, magic squares, zonotopes, and more. With more than 300 exercises and open research problems, the reader is an active participant, carried through diverse but tightly woven mathematical fields that are inspired by an innocently elementary question: What are the relationships between the continuous volume of a polytope and its discrete volume? Reviews of the first edition: “You owe it to yourself to pick up a copy of Computing the Continuous Discretely to read about a number of interesting problems in geometry, number theory, and combinatorics.” — MAA Reviews “The book is written as an accessible and engaging textbook, with many examples, historical notes, pithy quotes, commentary integrating the mate rial, exercises, open problems and an extensive bibliography.” — Zentralblatt MATH “This beautiful book presents, at a level suitable for advanced undergraduates, a fairly complete introduction to the problem of counting lattice points inside a convex polyhedron.” — Mathematical Reviews “Many departments recognize the need for capstone courses in which graduating students can see the tools they have acquired come together in some satisfying way. Beck and Robins have written the perfect text for such a course.” — CHOICE

Geometry is a classical core part of mathematics which, with its birth, marked the beginning of the mathematical sciences. Thus, not surprisingly, geometry has played a key role in many important developments of mathematics in the past, as well as in present times. While focusing on modern mathematics, one has to emphasize the increasing role of discrete mathematics, or equivalently, the broad movement to establish discrete analogues of major components of mathematics. In this way, the works of a number of outstanding mathema- cians including H. S. M. Coxeter (Canada), C. A. Rogers (United Kingdom), and L. Fejes-T oth (Hungary) led to the new and fast developing eld called discrete geometry. One can brie y describe this branch of geometry as the study of discrete arrangements of geometric objects in Euclidean, as well as in non-Euclidean spaces. This, as a classical core part, also includes the theory of polytopes and tilings in addition to the theory of packing and covering. D- crete geometry is driven by problems often featuring a very clear visual and applied character. The solutions use a variety of methods of modern mat- matics, including convex and combinatorial geometry, coding theory, calculus of variations, di erential geometry, group theory, and topology, as well as geometric analysis and number theory.

Convex and Discrete Geometry is an area of mathematics situated between analysis, geometry and discrete mathematics with numerous relations to other subdisciplines. This book provides a comprehensive overview of major results, methods and ideas of convex and discrete geometry and its applications. Besides being a graduate-level introduction to the field, it is a practical source of information and orientation for convex geometers, and useful to people working in the applied fields.

This monograph gives a short introduction to the relevant modern parts of discrete geometry, in addition to leading the reader to the frontiers of geometric research on sphere arrangements. The readership is aimed at advanced undergraduate and early graduate students, as well as interested researchers. It contains more than 40 open research problems ideal for graduate students and researchers in mathematics and computer science. Additionally, this book may be considered ideal for a one-semester advanced undergraduate or graduate level course. The core part of this book is based on three lectures given by the author at the Fields Institute during the thematic program on “Discrete Geometry and Applications” and contains four core topics. The first two topics surround active areas that have been outstanding from the birth of discrete geometry, namely dense sphere packings and tilings. Sphere packings and tilings have a very strong connection to number theory, coding, groups, and mathematical programming. Extending the tradition of studying packings of spheres, is the investigation of the monotonicity of volume under contractions of arbitrary arrangements of spheres. The third major topic of this book can be found under the sections on ball-polyhedra that study the possibility of extending the theory of convex polytopes to the family of intersections of congruent balls. This section of the text is connected in many ways to the above-mentioned major topics and it is also connected to some other important research areas as the one on coverings by planks (with close ties to geometric analysis). This fourth core topic is discussed under covering balls by cylinders.

The Handbook of Discrete and Computational Geometry is intended as a reference book fully accessible to nonspecialists as well as specialists, covering all major aspects of both fields. The book offers the most important results and methods in discrete and computational geometry to those who use them in their work, both in the academic world—as researchers in mathematics and computer science—and in the professional world—as practitioners in fields as diverse as operations research, molecular biology, and robotics. Discrete geometry has contributed significantly to the growth of discrete mathematics in recent years. This has been fueled partly by the advent of powerful computers and by the recent explosion of activity in the relatively young field of computational geometry. This synthesis between discrete and computational geometry lies at the heart of this Handbook. A growing list of application fields includes combinatorial optimization, computer-aided design, computer graphics, crystallography, data analysis, error-correcting codes, geographic information systems, motion planning, operations research, pattern recognition, robotics, solid modeling, and tomography.