Discusses the Dirichlet-Voronoĭ partition methods.

This book is the result of a 25-year-old project and comprises a collection of more than 500 attractive open problems in the field. The largely self-contained chapters provide a broad overview of discrete geometry, along with historical details and the most important partial results related to these problems. This book is intended as a source book for both professional mathematicians and graduate students who love beautiful mathematical questions, are willing to spend sleepless nights thinking about them, and who would like to get involved in mathematical research.

The second edition of this timely, definitive, and popular book continues to pursue the question: what is the most efficient way to pack a large number of equal spheres in n-dimensional Euclidean space? The authors also continue to examine related problems such as the kissing number problem, the covering problem, the quantizing problem, and the classification of lattices and quadratic forms. Like the first edition, the second edition describes the applications of these questions to other areas of mathematics and science such as number theory, coding theory, group theory, analog-to-digital conversion and data compression, n-dimensional crystallography, and dual theory and superstring theory in physics. Results as of 1992 have been added to the text, and the extensive bibliography - itself a contribution to the field - is supplemented with approximately 450 new entries.

The third edition of this definitive and popular book continues to pursue the question: what is the most efficient way to pack a large number of equal spheres in n-dimensional Euclidean space? The authors also examine such related issues as the kissing number problem, the covering problem, the quantizing problem, and the classification of lattices and quadratic forms. There is also a description of the applications of these questions to other areas of mathematics and science such as number theory, coding theory, group theory, analogue-to-digital conversion and data compression, n-dimensional crystallography, dual theory and superstring theory in physics. New and of special interest is a report on some recent developments in the field, and an updated and enlarged supplementary bibliography with over 800 items.

Spatial data analysis is a fast growing area and Voronoi diagrams provide a means of naturally partitioning space into subregions to facilitate spatial data manipulation, modelling of spatial structures, pattern recognition and locational optimization. With such versatility, the Voronoi diagram and its relative, the Delaunay triangulation, provide valuable tools for the analysis of spatial data. This is a rapidly growing research area and in this fully updated second edition the authors provide an up-to-date and comprehensive unification of all the previous literature on the subject of Voronoi diagrams. Features: * Expands on the highly acclaimed first edition * Provides an up-to-date and comprehensive survey of the existing literature on Voronoi diagrams * Includes a useful compendium of applications * Contains an extensive bibliography A wide range of applications is discussed, enabling this book to serve as an important reference volume on this topic. The text will appeal to students and researchers studying spatial data in a number of areas, in particular, applied probability, computational geometry, and Geographic Information Science (GIS). This book will appeal equally to those whose interests in Voronoi diagrams are theoretical, practical or both.

John Horton Conway's unique approach to quadratic forms was the subject of the Hedrick Lectures that he gave in August of 1991 at the Joint Meetings of the Mathematical Association of America and the American Mathematical Society in Orono, Maine. This book presents the substance of those lectures. The book should not be thought of as a serious textbook on the theory of quadratic forms. It consists rather of a number of essays on particular aspects of quadratic forms that have interested the author. The lectures are self-contained and will be accessible to the generally informed reader who has no particular background in quadratic form theory. The minor exceptions should not interrupt the flow of ideas. The afterthoughts to the lectures contain discussion of related matters that occasionally presuppose greater knowledge.

In the last decade mathematical crystallography has found increasing interest. Siginificant results have been obtained by algebraic, geometric, and group theoretic methods. Also classical crystallography in three-dimen sional Euclidean space has been extended to higher dimen sions in order to understand better the dimension independent crystallographic properties. The aim of this note is to introduce the reader to the fascinating and rich world of geometric crystallography. The prerequisites for reading it are elementary geometry and topological notations, and basic knowledge of group theory and linear algebra. Crystallography is geometric by its nature. In many cases, geometric arguments are the most appropriate and can thus best be understood. Thus the geometric point of view is emphasized here. The approach is axiomatic start ing from discrete point sets in Euclidean space. Symmetry comes in very soon and plays a central role. Each chapter starts with the necessary definitions and then the subject is treated in two- and three-dimensional space. Subsequent sections give an extension to higher dimensions. Short historical remarks added at the end of the chapters will show the development of the theory. The chapters are main ly self-contained. Frequent cross references, as well as an extended subject index, will help the reader who is only interested in a particular subject.