Radial points in the plane (Q5946643)

Let \(P\) be a set of \(n\) non-collinear points in the plane. A point \(q\notin P\) is called radial point for \(P\) if every line joining \(q\) to a point in \(P\) contains at least two points of \(P\). NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThe authors prove that any set of \(n\) non-collinear points in the plane has at most \(O(n)\) radial points, confirming a conjecture due to \textit{R. Pinchasi} [On the size of a directed set of a set of points in the plane (Preprint, Hebrew University, Jerusalem) (1999)]. NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThe main idea of the proof is the following. Any radial point \(q\) is proved to have an ``index'' \(j\) such that the number of lines through \(q\) which contain at least \(j\) points of \(P\) is at least \(n\over(6j\ln ^{2}j)\). The number of radial points with a small index is then shown to be linear and a linear bound for the number of radial points with a large index is likewise derived. NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINESeveral extensions of this result related to the incidence structure between points and lines are also presented.