Talk:Computational geometry

This is my version of a long stub. Someone else should fill in the details, I'm not a specialist. Loisel 00:38 Jan 31, 2003 (UTC)

Books added

hello- I just added four references for books on the topic. two points to note.

• • One, I'm not sure that the last book by O'Rourke belongs there, as it's the only non general book on the topic, still, I found it very useful to my understanding of computational geometry
  • Two, Maybe we could list title's ISBNs and compress authorship a bit somehow? I'm not sure about citation conventions, if someone wants to fix it up, that would be great

If someone disagrees, and feels such information doesn't have a place here ( it goes go out of date quickly) -- by all means, pull it out, but it's handy to point readers to more external sources of information, IMHO.

• • • Also -- more external website links would be useful, if anyone is so inclined.

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• O'Rourke's book is a good general reference if you remove all the code; it should stay, IMO.

• I put the references in a more academic style and wikified them. See Wikipedia:Cite_sources for a reference on these BibTeX-style citations. In my opinion, one shouldn't go to great lengths to keep a citation short -- I see thorough citation as an essential part of any academic community, although exceptions must be made. I say that having cited cell biology papers with > 50 authors. groan!

• Godfried Toussaint's webpage has some decent-to-good Java tutorials on various problems that he has students do for projects. I won't put a link to it because (a) I don't know how much interest there would be and (b) he was my prof, so there's a bit of bias, but if someone else thinks it should be linked, by all means put it up!

Adking80 22:03, 14 May 2005 (UTC)

Merge proposal

• Oppose. to merge List of books in computational geometry here. It is not a simple bibliography. It is a list with annotations. We have quite a few separate lists of books. It makes sense to merge articles accidentally started by several people on the same topic or to merge some unimportant issues that do not really warrant a separate article. Keeping the dicussed pages separately does not hinder understanding of the main topic in any way: the list is just one click away. The supporters of merging may look at it in this way: the "list of books" page is a merge of several separate small articles for individual books. I hope it will make you feel better. `'mikka 01:19, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Split proposal

Are there any references that divide computational geometry into the 3 areas listed in this article? Essentially all the modern use I see of computational geometry refers to what is described as combinatorial computational geometry. Therefore, I believe this page should talk only about what is described as combinatorial computational geometry. The other topics can be moved to other pages (as stubs, since there is very little information anyway). Gfonsecabr 02:06, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

First of all, if you are asking this question, then probably you are not in a position to have an educated opinon.

Now as to answers: Yes there are references that distinguish different uses of the term "computational geometry", starting from the seminal book by Preparata and Shamos. What is more, there are books in these different topics under the same name. Third, before starting moving "other topics elsewhere, you must write more than one sentence. Finaly, fourth, "numerical geometry" is not an established discipline to write such article. The term does exist and seen in google, but this is mostly not what the current article about. `'mikka 18:52, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Mikkalai, thanks for changing the 3 branches to only 2. And I have no intention to start "moving other topics elsewhere" without a lot of discussion. That's why I placed the proposal in the article, and started this discussion here. Now, we only have 2 branches (unless someone oposes and recreates the 3rd one): Combinatorial Computational Geometry and Numerical Computational Geometry. I agree with you that "Numerical Geometry" is not an established discipline. I believe you changed it to "Numerical Computational Geometry" which is not established with this name either: if you google either "numerical computational geometry" or "combinatorial computational geometry" you will only find this wikipedia article (and copies of it)! I believe that most of what is considered computational geometry nowadays fits in the Combinatorial Computational Geometry branch. Nevertheless, I also agree with Goodman and O'Rourke preface to Handbook of Discrete and Computational Geometry, which says:

..."computational geometry," which referred not long ago to simply the design and analysis of geometric algorithms, has in recent years broadened its scope, and now means the study of geometric problems from a computational point of view, including also computational convexity, computational topology, and questions involving the combinatorial complexity of arrangements and polyhedra

Therefore, I agree that this article should not be split, but I believe that the division using the two terms that occur only in Wikipedia is not adequate. It leads the reader to believe that the separation into these two branches is widely accepted, but in fact it is only the way by which the wikipedia article is organized. I think that a broad description of computational geometry, followed by several examples, with some explanation of the different "flavors" they have, is better. Let's see if more people give feedback and we can decide what to do about it. Gfonsecabr 21:02, 8 April 2007 (UTC)