In computational geometry, a coreset is a small set of points that approximates the shape of a larger point set, in the sense that applying some geometric measure to the two sets (such as their minimum bounding box volume) results in approximately equal numbers. Many natural geometric optimization problems have coresets that approximate an optimal solution to within a factor of , that can be found quickly (in linear time or near-linear time), and that have size bounded by a function of  independent of the input size, where  is an arbitrary positive number.
In computational geometry, a coreset consists of a small set of points that closely resembles the shape of a larger point set. When geometric measurements are applied to both sets (like their minimum bounding box volume), they produce nearly identical results. Many typical geometric optimization problems have coresets that approximate an optimal solution within a factor of , which can be found efficiently (in linear or near-linear time). The size of these coresets is limited by a function of  and does not depend on the input size, where  signifies any positive number.