Introduction
Many TopCoders seem to be mortally afraid of geometry problems. I think it's safe to say that the majority of them would be in favor of a ban on TopCoder geometry problems. However, geometry is a very important part of most graphics programs, especially computer games, and geometry problems are here to stay. In this article, I'll try to take a bit of the edge off of them, and introduce some concepts that should make geometry problems a little less frightening.
Vectors
Vectors are the basis of a lot of methods for solving geometry problems. Formally, a vector is defined by a direction and a magnitude. In the case of two-dimension geometry, a vector can be represented as pair of numbers, x and y, which gives both a direction and a magnitude. For example, the line segment from (1,3) to (5,1) can be represented by the vector (4,-2). It's important to understand, however, that the vector defines only the direction and magnitude of the segment in this case, and does not define the starting or ending locations of the vector.
Vector Addition
There are a number of mathematical operations that can be performed on vectors. The simplest of these is addition: you can add two vectors together and the result is a new vector. If you have two vectors (x1, y1) and (x2, y2), then the sum of the two vectors is simply (x1+x2, y1+y2). The image below shows the sum of four vectors. Note that it doesn't matter which order you add them up in - just like regular addition. Throughout these articles, we will use plus and minus signs to denote vector addition and subtraction, where each is simply the piecewise addition or subtraction of the components of the vector.
Dot Product
The addition of vectors is relatively intuitive; a couple of less obvious vector operations are dot and cross products. The dot product of two vectors is simply the sum of the products of the corresponding elements. For example, the dot product of (x1, y1) and (x2, y2) is x1*x2 + y1*y2....