The number of unit-area triangles in the plane: theme and variation (Q722324)

The paper under review concerns the following problem of Oppenheim (see [\textit{P. Erdős} and \textit{G. Purdy}, in: Handbook of combinatorics. Vol. 1--2. Amsterdam: Elsevier (North-Holland); Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 809--874 (1995; Zbl 0852.52009)]): Given \(n\) points in the plane, how many triangles spanned by the points can have unit area? The main result of the paper states that the number of unit-area triangles spanned by \(n\) points in the plane is \(O(n^{20/9})\). This improves several results obtained earlier. Moreover, a particular version of the initial problem is considered, when the input points are supposed to lie on three arbitrary straight lines in the plane. It is proved that for any triple of distinct straight lines \(l_1\), \(l_2\), \(l_3 \in \mathbb R^2\) and for any integer \(n\) there exist subsets \(S_1\subset l_1\), \(S_2\subset l_2\), \(S_3\subset l_3\), each of cardinality \(\Theta(n)\), such that \(S_1\times S_2\times S_3\) spans \(\Theta(n^2)\) unit-area triangles.