Coloring points with respect to squares

Abstract

We consider the problem of $2$-coloring geometric hypergraphs. Specifically, we show that there is a constant $m$ such that any finite set of points in the plane $\mathcal{S} \subset {\mathbb R}^2$ can be $2$-colored such that every axis-parallel square that contains at least $m$ points from $\mathcal{S}$ contains points of both colors. Our proof is constructive, that is, it provides a polynomial-time algorithm for obtaining such a $2$-coloring. By affine transformations this result immediately applies also when considering $2$-coloring points with respect to homothets of a fixed parallelogram.