In this paper we establish large deviation results on the number of extreme points of a homogeneous Poisson point process in the unit ball of R d . In particular, we deduce an almost-sure law of large numbers in any dimension. As an auxiliary result we prove strong localization of the extreme points in an annulus near the boundary of the ball.

The typical cell of a stationary Poisson hyperplane tessellation in the d-dimensional Euclidean space is called the Poisson polytope, and the cell containing the origin is called the Poisson 0-polytope. The intention of the paper is to show that the cells of the anisotropic tessellations are in some sense larger than those of the isotropic tessellations. Under the condition of equal intensities, it is proved that the moments of order n = 1, 2, … for the volume of the Poisson 0-polytope in the anisotropic case are not smaller than the corresponding moments in the isotropic case. Similar results are derived for the Poisson polytope. Finally, generalizations are mentioned.

The problem of estimating an unknown compact convex set K in the plane, from a sample (X 1,···,X n ) of points independently and uniformly distributed over K, is considered. Let K n be the convex hull of the sample, Δ be the Hausdorff distance, and Δn := Δ (K, K n ). Under mild conditions, limit laws for Δn are obtained. We find sequences (a n ), (b n ) such that

(Δn - b n )/a n → Λ (n → ∞), where Λ is the Gumbel (double-exponential) law from extreme-value theory. As expected, the directions of maximum curvature play a decisive role. Our results apply, for instance, to discs and to the interiors of ellipses, although for eccentricity e < 1 the first case cannot be obtained from the second by continuity. The polygonal case is also considered.

The convex hull of n independent random points in ℝd , chosen according to the normal distribution, is called a Gaussian polytope. Estimates for the variance of the number of i-faces and for the variance of the ith intrinsic volume of a Gaussian polytope in ℝd , d∈ℕ, are established by means of the Efron-Stein jackknife inequality and a new formula of Blaschke-Petkantschin type. These estimates imply laws of large numbers for the number of i-faces and for the ith intrinsic volume of a Gaussian polytope as n→∞.

The Hausdorff distance between a compact convex set K ⊂ ℝd and random sets is studied. Basic inequalities are derived for the case of being a convex subset of K. If applied to special sequences of such random sets, these inequalities yield rates of almost sure convergence. With the help of duality considerations these results are extended to the case of being the intersection of a random family of halfspaces containing K.

The Gaussian polytope $\mathcal P_{n,d}$ is the convex hull of n independent standard normally distributed points in $\mathbb{R}^d$. We derive explicit expressions for the probability that $\mathcal P_{n,d}$ contains a fixed point $x\in\mathbb{R}^d$ as a function of the Euclidean norm of x, and the probability that $\mathcal P_{n,d}$ contains the point $\sigma X$, where $\sigma\geq 0$ is constant and X is a standard normal vector independent of $\mathcal P_{n,d}$. As a by-product, we also compute the expected number of k-faces and the expected volume of $\mathcal P_{n,d}$, thus recovering the results of Affentranger and Schneider (Discr. and Comput. Geometry, 1992) and Efron (Biometrika, 1965), respectively. All formulas are in terms of the volumes of regular spherical simplices, which, in turn, can be expressed through the standard normal distribution function $\Phi(z)$ and its complex version $\Phi(iz)$. The main tool used in the proofs is the conic version of the Crofton formula.

Let n points be randomly and independently placed in R d according to a common probability law. It is known that the expected volume for the convex hull of these points, in the cases where n - d ≥ 2 and even, is related linearly to expected volumes of the convex hulls for j points, j < n. We show that similar identities for these volumes hold almost surely - and in contexts where independence and communality of law do not apply. New geometric and topological identities developed here provide a foundation for this result.

In this paper we generalize some of the classical results of Rényi and Sulanke (1963), (1964) in the context of spindle convexity. A planar convex disc S is spindle convex if it is the intersection of congruent closed circular discs. The intersection of finitely many congruent closed circular discs is called a disc polygon. We prove asymptotic formulae for the expectation of the number of vertices, missed area, and perimeter difference of uniform random disc polygons contained in a sufficiently smooth spindle convex disc.

The vertices of the convex hull of a uniform sample from the interior of a convex polygon are known to be concentrated close to the vertices of the polygon. Furthermore, the remaining area of the polygon outside of the convex hull is concentrated close to the vertices of the polygon. In order to see what happens in a corner of the polygon given by two adjacent edges, we consider—in view of affine invariance—n points P 1,…, P n distributed independently and uniformly in the interior of the triangle with vertices (0, 1), (0, 0), and (1, 0). The number of vertices of the convex hull, which are close to the origin (0, 0), is then given by the number Ñ n of points among P 1,…, P n , which are vertices of the convex hull of (0, 1), P 1,…, P n , and (1, 0). Correspondingly, D̃ n is defined as the remaining area of the triangle outside of this convex hull. We derive exact (nonasymptotic) formulae for var Ñ n and var . These formulae are in line with asymptotic distribution results in Groeneboom (1988), Nagaev and Khamdamov (1991), and Groeneboom (2012), as well as with recent results in Pardon (2011), (2012).

We consider a stationary Poisson hyperplane process with given directional distribution and intensity in d-dimensional Euclidean space. Generalizing the zero cell of such a process, we fix a convex body K and consider the intersection of all closed halfspaces bounded by hyperplanes of the process and containing K. We study how well these random polytopes approximate K (measured by the Hausdorff distance) if the intensity increases, and how this approximation depends on the directional distribution in relation to properties of K.