Find if a point lies bellow or above a curve
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TYo
on 4 Jun 2015
Commented: Vithal Bable
on 14 Aug 2018
Is it possible to find if a point lies under a curve C if the curve is not defined by an equation but by points? Say we have point Po(Xo,Yo) and I want to find if this Po is located below, under or on the curve.
Any ideas of how to do that?
I can only think of the following method:
- Drawing a line 'l' connecting (0,0),Po, the curve
- Finding the coordinates of the point P1 at which 'l' crosses the curve.
- Measuring the distance from (0,0) to Po = d1 and comparing it with the distance from (0,0) to P1 =d2
- If the d1>d2, Po is above, else, it is below
The problems:
- I don't know how to make the line go through the curve
- I don't know how to find the coordinates of the point at which the line crosses the curve
I know this might be a simple question for most of you but mathematically I can only think of formulas related to polygons, circles, triangles...etc. not for assymptotic curve.
Thank you!
Lina
1 Comment
Jonathan
on 4 Jun 2015
Edited: Jonathan
on 4 Jun 2015
If your curve C is convex (or concave), then you can find this easily by solving a linear system to find the linear combination of curve-points that give your query-point (regularised in the least-squared sense). Otherwise, if your curve doesn't have too many points, you can simply check whether your query-point is under/over each line-segment that makes up your curve (consecutive pairs of curve-points).
Accepted Answer
Salaheddin Hosseinzadeh
on 4 Jun 2015
Edited: Salaheddin Hosseinzadeh
on 4 Jun 2015
Hi TY
Yes, you can easily do this. I actually done it before, I had series of points and I draw a line with mouse (2 points) turned those 2 points into line and I guess I removed all the points under that line. The code I wrote is as follows.y and x are the position of the points, Y and X are the position acquired by mouse (threshold line data) which is equated as m*(x(i)-X(1))+Y(1))
%%Added on May 18 2015 to cut a certain point
[X,Y] = ginput(2); % taking 2 points by mouse
m = (Y(2) - Y(1)) ./ (X(2)-X(1)) % defining the line slope
C = 0
newX = 0;
newY = 0;
xSize = numel(x)
for i =1: numel(x)
if (y(i)> (m*(x(i)-X(1))+Y(1))) % checking if its above the defined line
C = C+1;
newX(C) = x(i);
newY(C) = y(i);
end
assignin('base','X',newX)
assignin('base','Y',newY)
end
figure
plot(newX,newY,'*')
axis equal
Here is a picture of the result
![](https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/uploaded_files/177282/image.png)
What you want is no different than this, I had to create the points for the lines which I draw by means of 2 points, but you have your threshold line points apparently. One step closer to what you want!
Good luck!
1 Comment
Vithal Bable
on 14 Aug 2018
this is wrong code as you not provided small letter variable'x' value....
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