geometric data analysis

I got some real hacking time in this afternoon with Gaby Contardo (Flatiron). We worked through some of the code issues and some of the conceptual issues behind our methods for finding gaps in point clouds using (what I call) geometric data analysis, in which we find critical points (saddles, minima, maxima) and trace their connections to map out valleys and ridges. We worked out a set of procedures (and tested some of them) to find critical points, join them up with constrained gradient descents, and label the pathways with local meta-data that indicate how “gappy” they are.