Given
points, find the line segments with the shortest possible total length which connect
the points. The segments need not necessarily be straight from one point to another.
For three points, if all angles are less than , then the line segments are those connecting the
three points to a central point
which makes the angles
,
, and
all
. If one angle is greater
that
,
then
coincides with the offending angle.
For four points, is the intersection of the two diagonals, but the required
minimum segments are not necessarily these diagonals.
A modified version of the problem is, given two points, to find the segments with the shortest total length connecting the points such that each branch point may be connected to only three segments. There is no general solution to this version of the problem.