topic Re: Finding the perimeter points of an area of points. in Statistical Procedures

Finding the perimeter points of an area of points.

brophymj — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 20:05:48 GMT

I have a dataset of a 100 randomly generated xy coordinates. I'm trying isolate the points that are on the edge of the area. The definition of this would be:

if the xy coordinate has no x value from another point above it or

if the xy coordinate has no x value from another point below it or

if the xy coordinate has no y value from another point above it or

if the xy coordinate has no y value from another point above it

I'm looking for a reasonably efficient way of doing this.,

data obs;

do i= 1 to 100;

x= round(1000* ranuni(123),1);

y= round(1000* ranuni(789),1);

output;

end;

run;

Re: Finding the perimeter points of an area of points.

ballardw — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 20:39:00 GMT

I think you may need to provide some graphic examples of what you mean by coordinates that are on the "edge".

Same x but different y, or same y but different x seems to be the implied condition. But why would that make them an "edge"

If you have

(0, 10)

(0,15)

(0,20)

( 5, 10)

( 5, 15)

(5,20)

(10,10)

(15,10)

(25,10)

which are "edge"?

Re: Finding the perimeter points of an area of points.

brophymj — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 20:45:34 GMT

All except (5,15). When I say edge I mean if you drew a line arounf all the outer points such that there were no points outside the shape the points joining the line would be on the edge. Like an efficient frontier.

Re: Finding the perimeter points of an area of points.

Rick_SAS — Wed, 19 Aug 2015 20:49:28 GMT

It sounds like you are looking for the convex hull of the set of planar points. There is a convex hull algorithm in SAS/IML:

SAS/IML(R) 14.1 User's Guide