Small-Size Relative (p, ε)-Approximations for Well-Behaved Range Spaces

We present improved upper bounds for the size of relative (p, epsilon)-approximation for range spaces with the following property: For any (finite) range space projected onto (that is, restricted to) a ground set of size n and for any parameter 1 <= k <= n, the number of ranges of size at most k is only nearly-linear in n and polynomial in k. Such range spaces are called "well behaved". Our bound is an improvement over the bound O(log(1/p)/epsilon(2)p) introduced by Li et al. [17] for the general case (where this bound has been shown to be tight in the worst case), when p << epsilon. We also show that such small size relative (p, epsilon)-approximations can be constructed in expected polynomial time. Our bound also has an interesting interpretation in the context of "p-nets": As observed by Har-Peled and Sharir [13], p-nets are special cases of relative (p, epsilon)-approximations. Specifically, when epsilon is a constant smaller than 1, the analysis in [13, 17] implies that there are p-nets of size O(log (1/p)/p) that are also relative approximations. In this context our construction significantly improves this bound for well-behaved range spaces. Despite the progress in the theory of p-nets and the existence of improved bounds corresponding to the cases that we study, these bounds do not necessarily guarantee a bounded relative error. Lastly, we present several geometric scenarios of well-behaved range spaces, and show the resulting bound for each of these cases obtained as a consequence of our analysis. In particular, when epsilon is a constant smaller than 1, our bound for points and axis-parallel boxes in two and three dimensions, as well as points and "fat" triangles in the plane, matches the optimal bound for p-nets introduced in [3, 25].