Graham Scan
Graham's scan is a method of finding the convex hull of a finite set of points in the plane with time complexity O(''n'' log ''n''). It is named after Ronald Graham, who published the original algorithm in 1972. The algorithm finds all vertices of the convex hull ordered along its boundary. It uses a stack to detect and remove concavities in the boundary efficiently. Algorithm The first step in this algorithm is to find the point with the lowest y-coordinate. If the lowest y-coordinate exists in more than one point in the set, the point with the lowest x-coordinate out of the candidates should be chosen. Call this point ''P''. This step takes O(''n''), where ''n'' is the number of points in question. Next, the set of points must be sorted in increasing order of the angle they and the point ''P'' make with the x-axis. Any general-purpose sorting algorithm is appropriate for this, for example heapsort (which is O(''n'' log ''n'')). Sorting in order of angle does not require co ...
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