English

Fitting centroids by a projective transformation

Metric Geometry 2014-09-23 v1

Abstract

Given two subsets of R^d, when does there exist a projective transformation that maps them to two sets with a common centroid? When is this transformation unique modulo affine transformations? We study these questions for 0- and d-dimensional sets, obtaining several existence and uniqueness results as well as examples of non-existence or non-uniqueness. If both sets have dimension 0, then the problem is related to the analytic center of a polytope and to polarity with respect to an algebraic set. If one set is a single point, and the other is a convex body, then it is equivalent by polar duality to the existence and uniqueness of the Santal\'o point. For a finite point set versus a ball, it generalizes the M\"obius centering of edge-circumscribed convex polytopes and is related to the conformal barycenter of Douady-Earle. If both sets are dd-dimensional, then we are led to define the Santal\'o point of a pair of convex bodies. We prove that the Santal\'o point of a pair exists and is unique, if one of the bodies is contained within the other and has Hilbert diameter less than a dimension-depending constant. The bound is sharp and is obtained by a box inside a cross-polytope.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1409.6176,
  title  = {Fitting centroids by a projective transformation},
  author = {Ivan Izmestiev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.6176},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

33 pages, 13 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-22T06:02:23.043Z