Abstract
The second main chapter of this book is dedicated to problems from the area of computational geometry. We consider four different problems. First, we discuss the well-known use of the rubber band metaphor to find the Euclidean shortest path in a plane with obstacles. In the second problem, we present our original use of the rubber band metaphor to significantly simplify simple distance calculations, in particular the distance between two line segments in two, three, and even more dimensions. The third problem considered is concerned with testing whether a point is contained in a polygon. For this problem we develop an original metaphor based on the definition of the winding number, and we use it to design an algorithm that is easy to implement. Finally, we show another physical metaphor that can be used to triangulate a polygon easily.
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Forišek, M., Steinová, M. (2013). Computational Geometry. In: Explaining Algorithms Using Metaphors. SpringerBriefs in Computer Science. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5019-0_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5019-0_3
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