Abstract

Let P be a set of n points in R d. A subset S of P is called a (k, ε)-kernel if for every direction, the direction width of S ε-approximates that of P, when k “outliers ” can be ignored in that direction. We show that a (k, ε)-kernel of P of size O(k/ε (d−1)/2) can be computed in time O(n+k 2 /ε d−1). The new algorithm works by repeatedly “peeling” away (0, ε)-kernels from the point set. We also present a simple ε-approximation algorithm for fitting various shapes through a set of points with at most k outliers. The algorithm is incremental and works by repeatedly “grating ” critical points into a working set, till the working set provides the required approximation. We prove that the size of the working set is independent of n, and thus results in a simple and practical, near-linear ε-approximation algorithm for shape fitting with outliers in low dimensions. We demonstrate the practicality of our algorithms by showing their empirical performance on various inputs and problems. 1

Citations