Lecture

Discrete Variables: Geometric Properties

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Description

This lecture introduces the geometric properties of discrete variables in geographic information systems, covering points, lines, and polygons. It explains how to describe their geometric properties, calculate shape, location, and size indices, and analyze spatial discontinuities at different scales.

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Related concepts (32)

Geometry

Geometry (; ) is a branch of mathematics concerned with properties of space such as the distance, shape, size, and relative position of figures. Geometry is, along with arithmetic, one of the oldest branches of mathematics. A mathematician who works in the field of geometry is called a geometer. Until the 19th century, geometry was almost exclusively devoted to Euclidean geometry, which includes the notions of point, line, plane, distance, angle, surface, and curve, as fundamental concepts.

Geometric mean

In mathematics, the geometric mean is a mean or average which indicates a central tendency of a finite set of real numbers by using the product of their values (as opposed to the arithmetic mean which uses their sum). The geometric mean is defined as the nth root of the product of n numbers, i.e., for a set of numbers a1, a2, ..., an, the geometric mean is defined as or, equivalently, as the arithmetic mean in logscale: Most commonly the numbers are restricted to being non-negative, to avoid complications related to negative numbers not having real roots, and frequently they are restricted to being positive, to enable the use of logarithms.

Simple polygon

In geometry, a simple polygon is a polygon that does not intersect itself and has no holes. That is, they are piecewise-linear Jordan curves consisting of finitely many line segments. They include as special cases the convex polygons, star-shaped polygons, and monotone polygons. The sum of external angles of a simple polygon is . Every simple polygon with sides can be triangulated by of its diagonals, and by the art gallery theorem its interior is visible from some of its vertices.

Polygon

In geometry, a polygon (ˈpɒlɪɡɒn) is a plane figure made up of line segments connected to form a closed polygonal chain. The segments of a closed polygonal chain are called its edges or sides. The points where two edges meet are the polygon's vertices or corners. An n-gon is a polygon with n sides; for example, a triangle is a 3-gon. A simple polygon is one which does not intersect itself. More precisely, the only allowed intersections among the line segments that make up the polygon are the shared endpoints of consecutive segments in the polygonal chain.

Arithmetic–geometric mean

In mathematics, the arithmetic–geometric mean of two positive real numbers x and y is the mutual limit of a sequence of arithmetic means and a sequence of geometric means: Begin the sequences with x and y: Then define the two interdependent sequences (an) and (gn) as These two sequences converge to the same number, the arithmetic–geometric mean of x and y; it is denoted by M(x, y), or sometimes by agm(x, y) or AGM(x, y). The arithmetic–geometric mean is used in fast algorithms for exponential and trigonometric functions, as well as some mathematical constants, in particular, computing π.

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