Related papers: On Cartesian Products which Determine Few Distinct…

We prove that for some universal $c$, a non-collinear set of $N>\frac{1}{c}$ points in the Euclidean plane determines at least $c \frac{N}{\log N}$ distinct areas of triangles with one vertex at the origin, as well as at least $c…

We study a family of variants of Erd\H os' unit distance problem, concerning distances and dot products between pairs of points chosen from a large finite point set. Specifically, given a large finite set of $n$ points $E$, we look for…

The Erd\H{o}s distance problem concerns the least number of distinct distances that can be determined by $N$ points in the plane. The integer lattice with $N$ points is known as \textit{near-optimal}, as it spans $\Theta(N/\sqrt{\log(N)})$…

The Erd\H{o}s distinct distance problem is a ubiquitous problem in discrete geometry. Somewhat less well known is Erd\H{o}s' distinct angle problem, the problem of finding the minimum number of distinct angles between $n$ non-collinear…

We first describe a reduction from the problem of lower-bounding the number of distinct distances determined by a set $S$ of $s$ points in the plane to an incidence problem between points and a certain class of helices (or parabolas) in…

Given a set $\mathcal{P}$ of $h$ pairwise disjoint simple polygonal obstacles in $\mathbb{R}^2$ defined with $n$ vertices, we compute a sketch $\Omega$ of $\mathcal{P}$ whose size is independent of $n$, depending only on $h$ and the input…

We show that for any finite set $P$ of points in the plane and $\epsilon>0$ there exist $\displaystyle O\left(\frac{1}{\epsilon^{3/2+\gamma}}\right)$ points in ${\mathbb{R}}^2$, for arbitrary small $\gamma>0$, that pierce every convex set…

According to a classical result of Spencer, Szemer\'edi, and Trotter (1984), the maximum number of times the unit distance can occur among $n$ points in the plane is $O(n^{4/3})$. This is far from Erd\H{o}s's lower bound, $n^{1+O(1/\log\log…

Let $P$ be a set of $N$ points in the Euclidean plane, where a positive proportion of points lies off a single straight line. This note points out two facts concerning the number of equivalence classes of triangles that $P$ determines,…

It is shown that given a set of $N$ points in the plane or on the sphere, there is a subset of size $\gtrsim N^{1/3}/\log N$ with all pairwise distances between points distinct.

In this note it is established that, for any finite set $A$ of real numbers, there exist two elements $a,b \in A$ such that $$|(a+A)(b+A)| \gg \frac{|A|^2}{\log |A|}.$$ In particular, it follows that $|(A+A)(A+A)| \gg \frac{|A|^2}{\log…

We investigate the box dimensions of compact sets in $\mathbb{R}^2$ that contain a unit distance in every direction (such sets may have zero Hausdorff dimension). Among other results, we show that the lower box dimension must be at least…

The dimension of a partially-ordered set $P$ is the smallest integer $d$ such that one can embed $P$ into a product of $d$ linear orders. We prove that the dimension of the divisibility order on the interval $\{1, \dotsc, n\}$ is bounded…

In 1946, Erd\H{o}s posed the distinct distance problem, which seeks to find the minimum number of distinct distances between pairs of points selected from any configuration of $n$ points in the plane. The problem has since been explored…

A celebrated theorem due to Bannai-Bannai-Stanton says that if $A$ is a set of points in $\mathbb{R}^{d}$, which determines $s$ distinct distances, then $$|A| \leq {d+s \choose s}.$$ In this note, we give a new simple proof of this result…

We have argued that quantum mechanics and general relativity give a lower bound $\delta l \gtrsim l^{1/3} l_P^{2/3}$ on the measurement uncertainty of any distance $l$ much greater than the Planck length $l_P$. Recently Baez and Olson have…

We study several problems concerning convex polygons whose vertices lie in a Cartesian product of two sets of $n$ real numbers (for short, \emph{grid}). First, we prove that every such grid contains $\Omega(\log n)$ points in convex…

We give a complete and self-contained proof of a folklore theorem which says that in an Alexandrov space the distance between a point $\gamma(t)$ on a geodesic $\gamma$ and a compact set $K$ is a right-differentiable function of $t$.…

The Erd\H{o}s distinct distance problem is a ubiquitous problem in discrete geometry. Less well known is Erd\H{o}s' distinct angle problem, the problem of finding the minimum number of distinct angles between $n$ non-collinear points in the…

In \cite{FKW} Katznelson and Weiss establish that all sufficiently large distances can always be attained between pairs of points from any given measurable subset of $\mathbb{R}^2$ of positive upper (Banach) density. A second proof of this…