Piecewise linear approximations of set-valued maps (Q1122076)

Let F be a set-valued function, defined on [0,1] with values F(t), which are compact subsets of the Euclidean (real) space \(R^ n\). The question of the approximation of such a map F by one which is piecewise linear is studied. If all the values F(t) are convex sets then the standard linear interpolation formula yields a good approximation. Otherwise the standard interpolation may fail to supply an approximation. To overcome the difficulty the author approaches the problem otherwise. The ensemble of compact sets can be regarded as a metric space with the Hausdorff distance h(A,B) between the two compact subsets A and B in \(R^ n\). The following two problems are studied. (I). Given a partition \(\pi =\{0=t_ 0<t_ 1<...<t_ k=1\}\) find a continuous set-valued function \(F_{\pi}\) such that \(F_{\pi}(t_ j)=F(t_ j)\) for all j, and whenever \(t_ j\leq s_ 1<s_ 2<s_ 3\leq t_{j+1}\), the value \(F_{\pi}(s_ 2)\) is a weighted average of \(F_{\pi}(s_ 1)\) and \(F_{\pi}(s_ 3)\), with respective weights \((s_ 3-s_ 2)/(s_ 3- s_ 1)\) and \((s_ 2-s_ 1)/(s_ 3-s_ 1)\). (II). Given a partition \(\pi\), find a continuous set-valued function \(F_{\pi}\), such that \(F_{\pi}(t_ j)=F(t_ j)\) for all j, and whenever \(t_ j\leq s_ 1<s_ 2\leq t_{j+1}\) then \[ h(F_{\pi}(s_ 1),F_{\pi}(s_ 2))=((s_ 2-s_ 1)/(t_{j+1}-t_ j))h(F(t_ j),F(t_{j+1})). \]