For a finite set P of points in the plane in general position, a crossing family of size k in P is a collection of k line segments with endpoints in P that are pairwise crossing. It is a long-standing open problem to determine the largest size of a crossing family in any set of n points in the plane in general position. It is widely believed that this size should be linear in n. Motivated by results from the theory of partitioning complete geometric graphs, we study a variant of this problem for point sets P that do not contain a non-crossing family of size m, which is a collection of 4 disjoint subsets P₁, P₂, P₃, and P₄ of P, each containing m points of P, such that for every choice of 4 points p_i ∈ P_i, the set {p₁,p₂,p₃,p₄} is such that p₄ is in the interior of the triangle formed by p₁,p₂,p₃. We prove that, for every m ∈ ℕ, each set P of n points in the plane in general position contains either a crossing family of size n/2^{O(√{log{m}})} or a non-crossing family of size m, by this strengthening a recent breakthrough result by Pach, Rubin, and Tardos (2021). Our proof is constructive and we show that these families can be obtained in expected time O(nm^{1+o(1)}). We also prove that a crossing family of size Ω(n/m) or a non-crossing family of size m in P can be found in expected time O(n).

We introduce a new complexity measure for cocomparability graphs of posets or in other words, intersection graphs of piecewise linear functions, the bend number. We prove that cocomparability graphs of bounded bend number are not too plentiful and give two hierarchies of classes of cocomparability graphs, depending on whether the piecewise linear functions are restricted to slopes of ±1 (diagonal case) or not (general case). These hierarchies give a gradation between permutation graphs and cocomparability graphs.

Let S be a point set in the plane, and let 𝒫(S) and 𝒞(S) be the sets of all plane spanning paths and caterpillars on S. We study reconfiguration operations on 𝒫(S) and 𝒞(S). In particular, we prove that all of the commonly studied reconfigurations on plane spanning trees still yield connected reconfiguration graphs for caterpillars when S is in convex position. If S is in general position, we show that the rotation, compatible flip and flip graphs of 𝒞(S) are connected while the slide graph is sometimes disconnected, but always has a component of size 1/4(3ⁿ-1). We then study sizes of connected components in reconfiguration graphs of plane spanning paths. In this direction, we show that no component of size at most 7 can exist in the flip graph on 𝒫(S).