Raising a rather general question here. This is a tantalising discussion, but the notion of "concave hull" strikes me as extremely ill-defined!
I'd like to see statement of what it is (generically) supposed to be. The examples discussed so far seem to rely on a person's inner feelings of what it is supposed to be. Consider the following simple example (where I have drawn a "concave hull" by hand, using sentimental criteria). set.seed(54321) X <- c(-1+rnorm(10),1+rnorm(10)) Y <- rnorm(20) plot(X,Y,pch="+",col="blue",xlim=c(-4,4),ylim=c(-3,3)) for(i in (1:20)) text(X[i]+0.150,Y[i],i,cex=0.25) ## Find their convex hull: ix0 <- chull(X,Y) ; n <- length(CH.ix0) ix1 <- c(ix0,ix0[1]) # close it lines(X[ix1],Y[ix1],col="green") ## Draw a "concave hull": concix <- c(19,18,8,16,11,1,3,2,4,7,15,5,10,9,14,13,20,12,17,19) lines(X[concix],Y[concix],col="red") I have deliberately left the single point 6 "dangling", since I am agonising over the choice between: [A] Leaving it as it is, as in interior point, on the grounds that the resulting "concave hull" boundary is fairly smooth; [B] Inserting it between c( ... ,2,4,7,6,15, ... ), which is the "least uncomfortable" of the two obvious possibilities; [C] Inserting it between c( ... ,2,4,6,7,15, ... ), which is the "more uncomfortsable" of the two onvious possibilities. Can someone provide counselling for me? I am hearing too many voices about this! Should I have tried to be less inclusive? Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@manchester.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 26-Nov-09 Time: 20:52:03 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------ ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.