Richard and Barbara Males
2010-Mar-22 21:35 UTC
[R] determine upper convex hull, 2-dimensional case
For an environmental planning example that involves looking at the relative efficiencies of one plan over another, I need to determine the pareto-efficient plans (which I have done), and then, within that set of plans, determine the convex hull representing the outer upper boundary of those points. I have a dataframe, dfPlans, as follows, representing the pareto-efficient cost and benefit of different environmental restoration plans out of a larger set of plans, where A1, EC, A6, and A4 are identifiers for the plans. Cost Benefit A1 0.00 0.000 EC 0.00 7821.689 A6 76783.19 16094.142 A4 78703.73 22245.760 I am interesting in determining what I believe is called the upper convex hull, i.e. the upper outer boundary if I plot benefit on the y axis, cost on the x axis. This should be plans A1, EC, and A4, and not point A6. I have used chull, which returns all of the points, including A6, and have tried to use convhulln with the QU option, but I am unclear as to how to interpret the results, which are returned as follows:> chull(dfPlans)[1] 1 2 3 4> convhulln(dfPlans,option="QU")[,1] [,2] [1,] 3 2 [2,] 3 4 [3,] 1 2 [4,] 1 4 Any assistance greatly appreciated, any way to accomplish my goal (need not use convhulln or chull). Thanks in advance. -- Richard M. Males Cincinnati, OH USA