Robustness and Randomness

The study of robustness problems for computational geometry algorithms is a topic that has been subject to intensive research efforts from both computer science and mathematics communities. Robustness problems are caused by the lack of precision in computations involving floating-point instead of real numbers. This paper reviews methods dealing with robustness and inaccuracy problems. It discusses approaches based on exact arithmetic, interval arithmetic and probabilistic methods. The paper investigates the possibility to use randomness at certain levels of reasoning to make geometric constructions more robust.