Excursion Through Discrete Differential Geometry

the long version

"Discrete Differential Geometry (DDG) is an emerging discipline at the boundary between mathematics and computer science. It aims to translate concepts from classical differential geometry into a language that is purely finite and discrete, and can hence be used by algorithms to reason about geometric data. In contrast to standard numerical approximation, the central philosophy of DDG is to faithfully and exactly preserve key invariants of geometric objects at the discrete level. This process of translation from smooth to discrete helps to both illuminate the fundamental meaning behind geometric ideas and provide useful algorithmic guarantees"--Back cover.