Related papers: Ordinary lines in space

Fulton asked how many solutions to a problem of enumerative geometry can be real, when that problem is one of counting geometric figures of some kind having specified position with respect to some general fixed figures. For the problem of…

We study the lengths of curves passing through a fixed number of points on the boundary of a convex shape in the plane. We show that for any convex shape $K$, there exist four points on the boundary of $K$ such that the length of any curve…

We use three different methods to count the number of lines in the plane whose intersection with a fixed general quintic has fixed cross-ratios. We compare and contrast these methods, shedding light on some classical ideas which underly…

For a nontrivial measurable set on the real line, there are always exceptional points, where the lower and upper densities of the set are neither zero nor one. We quantify this statement, following work by V. Kolyada, and obtain the…

The line generated by two distinct points, $x$ and $y$, in a finite metric space $M=(V,d)$, denoted by $\overline{xy}^M$, is the set of points given by $$\overline{xy}^M:=\{z\in V: d(x,y)=|d(x,z)\pm d(z,y)|\}.$$ A 2-set $\{x,y\}$ such that…

Let $P$ be a set of $n$ points in general position in the plane. Let $R$ be a set of points disjoint from $P$ such that for every $x,y \in P$ the line through $x$ and $y$ contains a point in $R$. We show that if $|R| < \frac{3}{2}n$ and $P…

New bounds on the number of similar or directly similar copies of a pattern within a finite subset of the line or the plane are proved. The number of equilateral triangles whose vertices all lie within an $n$-point subset of the plane is…

We prove that there is no d such that all finite projective planes can be represented by convex sets in R^d, answering a question of Alon, Kalai, Matousek, and Meshulam. Here, if P is a projective plane with lines l_1,...,l_n, a…

A regular linear line complex is a three-parameter set of lines in space, whose Pl\"ucker vectors lie in a hyperplane, which is not tangent to the Klein quadric. Our main result is a bound $O(n^{1/2}m^{3/4} + m+n)$ for the number of…

We show that the number of unit-area triangles determined by a set $S$ of $n$ points in the plane is $O(n^{20/9})$, improving the earlier bound $O(n^{9/4})$ of Apfelbaum and Sharir [Discrete Comput. Geom., 2010]. We also consider two…

We prove that any $n$ points in $\mathbb{R}^2$, not all on a line or circle, determine at least $\frac{1}{4}n^2-O(n)$ ordinary circles (circles containing exactly three of the $n$ points). The main term of this bound is best possible for…

The Sylvester-Gallai theorem states that for a finite set of points in the plane, if every line determined by any two of these points also contains a third, then the set is necessarily made of collinear points. In this paper, we first…

We first review some topics in the classical computational geometry of lines, in particular the O(n^{3+\epsilon}) bounds for the combinatorial complexity of the set of lines in R^3 interacting with $n$ objects of fixed description…

The two basic equations satisfied by the parameters of a block design define a three-dimensional affine variety $\mathcal{D}$ in $\mathbb{R}^{5}$. A point of $\mathcal{D}$ that is not in some sense trivial lies on four lines lying in…

Let $q$ be a prime power and $k$ be a natural number. What are the possible cardinalities of point sets ${S}$ in a projective plane of order $q$, which do not intersect any line at exactly $k$ points? This problem and its variants have been…

For a hypersurface in a projective space, we consider the set of pairs of a point and a line in the projective space such that the line intersects the hypersurface at the point with a fixed multiplicity. We prove that this set of pairs…

Let $\mathcal{F}$ be a plane singular curve defined over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$. The linear system of plane curves of a given degree passing through the singularities of $\cF$ provides potentially good bounds for the number of points…

Let $X$ be a set of $n$ points in the plane, not all on a line. According to the Gallai-Sylvester theorem, $X$ always spans an \emph{ordinary line}, i.e., one that passes through precisely 2 elements of $X$. Given an integer $c\ge 2,$ a…

An old problem in discrete geometry, originating with Kupitz, asks whether there is a fixed natural number $k$ such that every finite set of points in the plane has a line through at least two of its points where the number of points on…

We enumerate the number of surfaces of degree $d$ in $P^3$ having a singular line of order $k$, passing through $\delta$ generic points (where $\delta$ is the dimension of moduli space of such surfaces).