A Practical Approach for Computing the Diameter of a Point Set

We present an approximation algorithm for computing the diameter of a point-set in $\Re^d$. The new algorithm is sensitive to the ``hardness'' of computing the diameter of the given input, and for most inputs it is able to compute the exact diameter extremely fast. The new algorithm is simple, robust, has good empirical performance, and can be implemented quickly. As such, it seems to be the algorithm of choice in practice for computing/approximating the diameter.