Largest triangles in a polygon

Abstract

We study the problem of finding maximum-area triangles that can be inscribed in a polygon in the plane. We consider eight versions of the problem: we use either convex polygons or simple polygons as the container; we require the triangles to have either one corner with a fixed angle or all three corners with fixed angles; we either allow reorienting the triangle or require its orientation to be fixed. We present exact algorithms for all versions of the problem. In the case with reorientations, we also present (1−ε)-approximation algorithms.