Abstract
We prove that it is \(\#{\mathsf {P}}\)-complete to count the triangulations of a (non-simple) polygon.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See Sect. 2.2 for the definitions of \(\#{\mathsf {P}}\) and \(\#{\mathsf {P}}\)-completeness.
References
Aichholzer, O., Alvarez, V., Hackl, T., Pilz, A., Speckmann, B., Vogtenhuber, B.: An improved lower bound on the minimum number of triangulations. In: 32nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry. Leibniz Int. Proc. Inform., vol. 51, # 7. Leibniz-Zent. Inform., Wadern (2016)
Aichholzer, O., Hackl, T., Huemer, C., Hurtado, F., Krasser, H., Vogtenhuber, B.: On the number of plane geometric graphs. Graphs Comb. 23(suppl. 1), 67–84 (2007)
Aichholzer, O., Hurtado, F., Noy, M.: A lower bound on the number of triangulations of planar point sets. Comput. Geom. 29(2), 135–145 (2004)
Aichholzer, O., Orden, D., Santos, F., Speckmann, B.: On the number of pseudo-triangulations of certain point sets. J. Comb. Theory Ser. A 115(2), 254–278 (2008)
Alvarez, V., Bringmann, K., Curticapean, R., Ray, S.: Counting triangulations and other crossing-free structures via onion layers. Discrete Comput. Geom. 53(4), 675–690 (2015)
Alvarez, V., Bringmann, K., Ray, S., Seidel, R.: Counting triangulations and other crossing-free structures approximately. Comput. Geom. 48(5), 386–397 (2015)
Alvarez, V., Seidel, R.: A simple aggregative algorithm for counting triangulations of planar point sets and related problems. In: 29th Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry (Rio de Janeiro 2013), pp. 1–8. ACM, New York (2013)
Anclin, E.E.: An upper bound for the number of planar lattice triangulations. J. Comb. Theory Ser. A 103(2), 383–386 (2003)
Asano, Tak., Asano, Tet., Imai, H.: Partitioning a polygonal region into trapezoids. J. Assoc. Comput. Mach. 33(2), 290–312 (1986)
Asinowski, A., Rote, G.: Point sets with many non-crossing perfect matchings. Comput. Geom. 68, 7–33 (2018)
Bern, M., Eppstein, D.: Mesh generation and optimal triangulation. In: Computing in Euclidean Geometry. Lecture Notes Ser. Comput., vol. 1, pp. 23–90. World Scientific, River Edge (1992)
Bespamyatnikh, S.: An efficient algorithm for enumeration of triangulations. Comput. Geom. 23(3), 271–279 (2002)
Brönnimann, H., Kettner, L., Pocchiola, M., Snoeyink, J.: Counting and enumerating pointed pseudotriangulations with the greedy flip algorithm. SIAM J. Comput. 36(3), 721–739 (2006)
Chalopin, J., Gonçalves, D.: Every planar graph is the intersection graph of segments in the plane: extended abstract. In: 41st Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (Bethesda 2009), pp. 631–638. ACM, New York (2009)
Ding, Q., Qian, J., Tsang, W., Wang, C.: Randomly generating triangulations of a simple polygon. In: Computing and Combinatorics (Kunming 2005). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 3595, pp. 471–480. Springer, Berlin (2005)
Dittmer, S., Pak, I.: Counting linear extensions of restricted posets (2018). https://arxiv.org/abs/1802.06312
Dumitrescu, A., Schulz, A., Sheffer, A., Tóth, C.D.: Bounds on the maximum multiplicity of some common geometric graphs. SIAM J. Discrete Math. 27(2), 802–826 (2013)
Dyer, M., Goldberg, L.A., Paterson, M.: On counting homomorphisms to directed acyclic graphs. J. ACM 54(6), # 27 (2007)
Eppstein, D.: Forbidden Configurations in Discrete Geometry. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2018)
Epstein, P., Sack, J.-R.: Generating triangulations at random. ACM Trans. Model. Comput. Simul. 4(3), 267–278 (1994)
Flajolet, P., Noy, M.: Analytic combinatorics of non-crossing configurations. Discrete Math. 204(1–3), 203–229 (1999)
de Fraysseix, H., Pach, J., Pollack, R.: How to draw a planar graph on a grid. Combinatorica 10(1), 41–51 (1990)
García, A., Noy, M., Tejel, J.: Lower bounds on the number of crossing-free subgraphs of \(K_N\). Comput. Geom. 16(4), 211–221 (2000)
Hurtado, F., Noy, M., Urrutia, J.: Flipping edges in triangulations. Discrete Comput. Geom. 22(3), 333–346 (1999)
Jaeger, F., Vertigan, D.L., Welsh, D.J.A.: On the computational complexity of the Jones and Tutte polynomials. Math. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 108(1), 35–53 (1990)
Jarník, V.: Über die Gitterpunkte auf konvexen Kurven. Math. Z. 24(1), 500–518 (1926)
Kaibel, V., Ziegler, G.M.: Counting lattice triangulations. In: Surveys in Combinatorics 2003. London Mathematical Society Lecture Note Series, vol. 307, pp. 277–307. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2003)
Kamousi, P., Suri, S.: Stochastic minimum spanning trees and related problems. In: ANALCO11—Workshop on Analytic Algorithmics and Combinatorics (San Francisco 2011), pp. 107–116. SIAM, Philadelphia (2011)
Kant, G., Bodlaender, H.L.: Triangulating planar graphs while minimizing the maximum degree. Inform. Comput. 135(1), 1–14 (1997)
Karpinski, M., Lingas, A., Sledneu, D.: A QPTAS for the base of the number of crossing-free structures on a planar point set. Theoret. Comput. Sci. 711, 56–65 (2018)
Linial, N.: Hard enumeration problems in geometry and combinatorics. SIAM J. Algebraic Discrete Methods 7(2), 331–335 (1986)
Lubiw, A.: Decomposing polygonal regions into convex quadrilaterals. In: 1st Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry (Baltimore 1985), pp. 97–106. ACM, New York (1985)
Marx, D., Miltzow, T.: Peeling and nibbling the cactus: subexponential-time algorithms for counting triangulations and related problems. In: 32nd International Symposium on Computational Geometry. Leibniz Int. Proc. Inform., vol. 51, # 52. Leibniz-Zent. Inform., Wadern (2016)
Pilz, A., Seara, C.: Convex quadrangulations of bichromatic point sets. In: 33rd European Workshop on Computational Geometry (Malmö 2017), pp. 77–80. http://csconferences.mah.se/eurocg2017/proceedings.pdf
Ray, S., Seidel, R.: A simple and less slow method for counting triangulations and for related problems. In: 20th European Workshop on Computational Geometry (Seville 2004). http://www.eurocg.org/www.us.es/ewcg04/Articulos/seidel-s.ps
Santos, F., Seidel, R.: A better upper bound on the number of triangulations of a planar point set. J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 102(1), 186–193 (2003)
Scheinerman, E.R.: Intersection Classes and Multiple Intersection Parameters of Graphs. PhD thesis, Princeton University (1984)
Schnyder, W.: Embedding planar graphs on the grid. In: 1st Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (San Francisco 1990), pp. 138–148. SIAM, Philadelphia (1990)
Seidel, R.: On the number of triangulations of planar point sets. Combinatorica 18(2), 297–299 (1998)
Sharir, M., Sheffer, A.: Counting triangulations of planar point sets. Electron. J. Combin. 18(1), # 70 (2011)
Sharir, M., Sheffer, A., Welzl, E.: Counting plane graphs: perfect matchings, spanning cycles, and Kasteleyn’s technique. J. Combin. Theory Ser. A 120(4), 777–794 (2013)
Sharir, M., Welzl, E.: On the number of crossing-free matchings, cycles, and partitions. SIAM J. Comput. 36(3), 695–720 (2006)
Vadhan, S.P.: The complexity of counting in sparse, regular, and planar graphs. SIAM J. Comput. 31(2), 398–427 (2001)
Valiant, L.G.: The complexity of computing the permanent. Theor. Comput. Sci. 8(2), 189–201 (1979)
Wettstein, M.: Counting and enumerating crossing-free geometric graphs. J. Comput. Geom. 8(1), 47–77 (2017)
Xia, M., Zhang, P., Zhao, W.: Computational complexity of counting problems on \(3\)-regular planar graphs. Theor. Comput. Sci. 384(1), 111–125 (2007)
Acknowledgements
A preliminary version of this paper appeared in the Proceedings of the 2019 International Symposium on Computational Geometry. This work was supported in part by the US National Science Foundation under Grants CCF-1618301 and CCF-1616248.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Editor in Charge: Kenneth Clarkson
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Eppstein, D. Counting Polygon Triangulations is Hard. Discrete Comput Geom 64, 1210–1234 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00454-020-00251-7
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00454-020-00251-7