What is the "most uniform" way of distributing n points in the unit square? How big is the "irregularity" necessarily present in any such distribution? This book is an accessible and lively introduction to the area of geometric discrepancy theory, with numerous exercises and illustrations. In separate, more specialized parts, it also provides a comprehensive guide to recent research.

What is the "most uniform" way of distributing n points in the unit square? How big is the "irregularity" necessarily present in any such distribution? This book is an accessible and lively introduction to the area of geometric discrepancy theory, with numerous exercises and illustrations. In separate, more specialized parts, it also provides a comprehensive guide to recent research.

The study of geometric discrepancy, which provides a framework for quantifying the quality of a distribution of a finite set of points, has experienced significant growth in recent decades. This book provides a self-contained course in number theory, Fourier analysis and geometric discrepancy theory, and the relations between them, at the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level. It starts as a traditional course in elementary number theory, and introduces the reader to subsequent material on uniform distribution of infinite sequences, and discrepancy of finite sequences. Both modern and classical aspects of the theory are discussed, such as Weyl's criterion, Benford's law, the Koksma–Hlawka inequality, lattice point problems, and irregularities of distribution for convex bodies. Fourier analysis also features prominently, for which the theory is developed in parallel, including topics such as convergence of Fourier series, one-sided trigonometric approximation, the Poisson summation formula, exponential sums, decay of Fourier transforms, and Bessel functions.

The Handbook of Discrete and Computational Geometry is intended as a reference book fully accessible to nonspecialists as well as specialists, covering all major aspects of both fields. The book offers the most important results and methods in discrete and computational geometry to those who use them in their work, both in the academic world—as researchers in mathematics and computer science—and in the professional world—as practitioners in fields as diverse as operations research, molecular biology, and robotics. Discrete geometry has contributed significantly to the growth of discrete mathematics in recent years. This has been fueled partly by the advent of powerful computers and by the recent explosion of activity in the relatively young field of computational geometry. This synthesis between discrete and computational geometry lies at the heart of this Handbook. A growing list of application fields includes combinatorial optimization, computer-aided design, computer graphics, crystallography, data analysis, error-correcting codes, geographic information systems, motion planning, operations research, pattern recognition, robotics, solid modeling, and tomography.

The contributions in this book focus on a variety of topics related to discrepancy theory, comprising Fourier techniques to analyze discrepancy, low discrepancy point sets for quasi-Monte Carlo integration, probabilistic discrepancy bounds, dispersion of point sets, pair correlation of sequences, integer points in convex bodies, discrepancy with respect to geometric shapes other than rectangular boxes, and also open problems in discrepany theory.

While high-quality books and journals in this field continue to proliferate, none has yet come close to matching the Handbook of Discrete and Computational Geometry, which in its first edition, quickly became the definitive reference work in its field. But with the rapid growth of the discipline and the many advances made over the past seven years, it's time to bring this standard-setting reference up to date. Editors Jacob E. Goodman and Joseph O'Rourke reassembled their stellar panel of contributors, added manymore, and together thoroughly revised their work to make the most important results and methods, both classic and cutting-edge, accessible in one convenient volume. Now over more then 1500 pages, the Handbook of Discrete and Computational Geometry, Second Edition once again provides unparalleled, authoritative coverage of theory, methods, and applications. Highlights of the Second Edition: Thirteen new chapters: Five on applications and others on collision detection, nearest neighbors in high-dimensional spaces, curve and surface reconstruction, embeddings of finite metric spaces, polygonal linkages, the discrepancy method, and geometric graph theory Thorough revisions of all remaining chapters Extended coverage of computational geometry software, now comprising two chapters: one on the LEDA and CGAL libraries, the other on additional software Two indices: An Index of Defined Terms and an Index of Cited Authors Greatly expanded bibliographies

The main purpose of this book is to give an overview of the developments during the last 20 years in the theory of uniformly distributed sequences. The authors focus on various aspects such as special sequences, metric theory, geometric concepts of discrepancy, irregularities of distribution, continuous uniform distribution and uniform distribution in discrete spaces. Specific applications are presented in detail: numerical integration, spherical designs, random number generation and mathematical finance. Furthermore over 1000 references are collected and discussed. While written in the style of a research monograph, the book is readable with basic knowledge in analysis, number theory and measure theory.