Convex hull computation in SciPy - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Convex Hull Computation with SciPy

📖 Scenario: Imagine you have a set of points on a map representing locations of trees in a park. You want to find the smallest fence that can enclose all these trees. This fence shape is called the convex hull.

🎯 Goal: You will create a list of points, configure a helper variable, compute the convex hull using SciPy, and finally print the vertices of the hull.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of 2D points with exact coordinates

Create a variable to hold the number of points

Use SciPy's ConvexHull to compute the hull

Print the indices of the hull vertices

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Convex hulls are used in geography to find boundaries around locations, in robotics for obstacle avoidance, and in computer graphics for shape analysis.

💼 Career

Understanding convex hulls helps in data analysis, spatial data processing, and computational geometry tasks common in data science and machine learning roles.

1

Create the list of points

Create a variable called points that is a list of these exact 2D points: [1, 1], [2, 5], [3, 3], [5, 3], [3, 2], [2, 2].

SciPy

# Create the list of points called points
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list of lists to store the points exactly as shown.

2

Create a variable for the number of points

Create a variable called num_points that stores the number of points in the points list.

SciPy

points = [[1, 1], [2, 5], [3, 3], [5, 3], [3, 2], [2, 2]]
# Create num_points as the length of points
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the len() function to count the points.

3

Compute the convex hull

Import ConvexHull from scipy.spatial. Then create a variable called hull by passing points to ConvexHull.

SciPy

points = [[1, 1], [2, 5], [3, 3], [5, 3], [3, 2], [2, 2]]
num_points = len(points)
# Import ConvexHull and compute hull from points
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use from scipy.spatial import ConvexHull and then call ConvexHull(points).

4

Print the convex hull vertices

Print the vertices attribute of the hull object to show the indices of points forming the convex hull.

SciPy

from scipy.spatial import ConvexHull

points = [[1, 1], [2, 5], [3, 3], [5, 3], [3, 2], [2, 2]]
num_points = len(points)
hull = ConvexHull(points)
# Print the hull vertices
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use print(hull.vertices) to show the hull points.