English

On the Circle Covering Theorem by A. W. Goodman and R. E. Goodman

Metric Geometry 2017-02-17 v2

Abstract

In 1945, A. W. Goodman and R. E. Goodman proved the following conjecture by P. Erd\H{o}s: Given a family of (round) disks of radii r1r_1, \ldots, rnr_n in the plane it is always possible to cover them by a disk of radius R=riR = \sum r_i, provided they cannot be separated into two subfamilies by a straight line disjoint from the disks. In this note we show that essentially the same idea may work for different analogues and generalizations of their result. In particular, we prove the following: Given a family of positive homothetic copies of a fixed convex body KRdK \subset \mathbb{R}^d with homothety coefficients τ1,,τn>0\tau_1, \ldots, \tau_n > 0 it is always possible to cover them by a translate of d+12(τi)K\frac{d+1}{2}\left(\sum \tau_i\right)K, provided they cannot be separated into two subfamilies by a hyperplane disjoint from the homothets.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1605.04300,
  title  = {On the Circle Covering Theorem by A. W. Goodman and R. E. Goodman},
  author = {Arseniy Akopyan and Alexey Balitskiy and Mikhail Grigorev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.04300},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

7 pages, 3 figures