Computational Geometry in C (Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science) (Paperback)

by Joseph O'Rourke (Author) "Much of computational geometry performs its computations on geometrical objects known as polygons..." (more)
Key Phrases: innermost polytope, monotone mountains, int vnum, Additional Exercises, Towers of Hanoi, Michael Goodrich (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
."..very clearly written and manages to make traditionally difficult-to-explain topics such as point-line duality very understandable...includes interesting exercises that range from straightforward applications of the material to the more difficult and thought-provoking questions to open problems...conveys the feeling that computational geometry is interesting, exciting, important, and very active." Scot Drysdale, SIGACT News --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review
"This is an applied approach to fundamental concepts in computational geometry and should be read by every serious practitioner....From a pedagogical point of view, this book is an excellent choice for both undergraduate classes (perhaps with more emphasis on the implementations) and graduate classes (considering a number of the exercises) because of the extensive exercises that review, explore details, and encourage further reading." Computing Reviews

"Conveys the feeling that computational geometry is interesting, exciting, important, and very active." SIGACT News

"Anyone who wants to know what this field is all about should read this book!...a pleasure to read, as questions that arise naturally in the reader's mind are answered, in almost all cases, in the following paragraph. The style strikes an ideal balance between rigor and informality. Mr. O'Rourke must be a wonderful teacher and I envy his students." Siam Review

"...the book is an excellent basis for a course on computational geometry; many interesting exercises and hints for further reading give suitable guidance for teachers and for students." Mathematical Reviews

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 390 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 2000 edition (February 15, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521649765
• ISBN-13: 978-0521649766
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #240,397 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #3 in

  Books > Computers & Internet > Programming > C > Algorithms

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A clear, concise text on fundamental Computational Geometry, July 17, 1998

By	Bob Williamson ([e-mail]) (Fort Worth, Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Computational Geometry in C (Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science) (Paperback)

O'Rourke's approach reflects the essence of both "Computational Geometry" and the "C language" --- concise yet profound. The book covers the core subjects of Computational Geometry: polygon partitioning, convex hulls, Voronoi diagrams / Delaunay triangulation, "arrangements" of lines, geometric searching, and motion planning.

The book assumes some familiarity with the C language, but is very readable even for non-C programmers. This is an excellent text for use as an introduction to Computational Geometry, a primer for Preparata & Shamos, while at the same time it's an excellent addendum to that more seminal text. By weaving working code into his presentation, O'Rourke gives traction to the powerful engine of Preparata & Shamos.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very hepful, May 9, 2002

By	Dr. Lee D. Carlson (Baltimore, Maryland USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Anyone who is involved in areas such as computer graphics, computational radiology, robot vision, or visualization software should have a copy of this book. The author has done a fine job of introducing the most important algorithms in computational geometry, choosing the C language for their implementation. The choice of C might be somewhat dated now, since C++ is now beginning to dominate computational geometry, but readers who are actually programming these algorithms using C++ can easily extend the ones in the book to C++. Not all of the algorithms in the book are implemented into C, unfortunately, but the clarity of presentation is done well enough to make this implementation a fairly straightforward task. My interest in the book came from a need to design and implement algorithms for polyhedra in VRML and toric varieties in algebraic geometry. This book, along with others, was a great help in that regard. The running time of these algorithms was not really an issue with me, so the detail the author spends on discussing the complexity of the algorithms was not a concern. Readers who need to pay attention to running-time issues will appreciate his discussion of them for the algorithms that are presented.

The ability to visualize objects in an abstract subject like algebraic geometry boils down to, in the case of toric varieties, to a consideration of how to manipulate polytopes geometrically. A major portion of the book, if not all of it, is devoted to the computational geometry of polyhedra. Because it is an introductory book, some more advanced topics, such as Bayesian methods to find similarities between polyhedra, and neural network approaches to classifying polyhedral objects are not treated. Readers who need to do such things will be well-prepared for them after a study of this book. In addition, there are good exercises assigned at the end of each chapter, so the book could be used in the classroom. Some readers will however choose to use it as a reference source, and it would be a good one, for the author gives references to topics that he only touched upon in the book.

Some particular areas that were treated especially well were: 1. The discussion on data structures for surfaces of polyhedra. Although not very general, since he choose to deal with only triangulated polytopes, readers who need to be more general will have a good start in this discussion. 2. The discussion on volume overflow and how to deal with it using robust computation. 3. The discussion, albeit short, of the randomized incremental algorithm. 4. The treatment on the minimum spanning tree and Kruskal's algorithm. Communication network performance optimization is now a major application of this algorithm and others in graph theory, including the author's later discussion of Dijkstra's algorithm.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nice balance of theory with code, February 2, 2003

By	Jason (Illinios) - See all my reviews

This book was pleasantly surprising: I had expected to see code presented with minimal motivation or discussion of the underlying ideas -- something of a "Computational Geometry for Dummies" sort of book. That's not the case at all. This is a bona fide textbook on the subject, suitable for an undergraduate course.
It covers all of the the "classical" topics: convex hulls, line segment intersection, polygon triangulation, Voronoi diagrams, motion planning.

The mode of presentation -- supporting a discussion of the theories with implementable code -- is actually a bit refreshing. For comparison: Other books, when discussing the line segment intersection problem (ie: Given a set of line segments, find all of their intersection points) simply assume that computing the intersection of a pair of segments can be done in constant time. This is not an especially difficult problem, but the discussion seems more complete with a brief description of how this might be done. The same can be said about other primitive tests and operations in other algorithms.

Overall, this book can stand alone as an excellent introduction to computational geometry, but a serious student in the subject will want more: perhaps Preparata and Shamos or de Berg et. al.