Given a finite-dimensional Banach space $X$ and an Auerbach basis $\{(x_{k},x_{k}^{\ast }):1\leqslant k\leqslant n\}$ of $X$, it is proved that there exist $n+1$ linear combinations $z_{1},\ldots ,z_{n+1}$ of $x_{1},\ldots ,x_{n}$ with coordinates $0,\pm 1$, such that $\Vert z_{k}\Vert =1$, for $k=1$, $2,\ldots ,n+1$ and $\Vert z_{k}-z_{l}\Vert >1$, for $1\leqslant k<l\leqslant n+1$.

Many classical geometric inequalities on functionals of convex bodies depend on the dimension of the ambient space. We show that this dimension dependence may often be replaced (totally or partially) by different symmetry measures of the convex body. Since these coefficients are bounded by the dimension but possibly smaller, our inequalities sharpen the original ones. Since they can often be computed efficiently, the improved bounds may also be used to obtain better bounds in approximation algorithms.

In this paper we consider the stationary Poisson Boolean model with spherical grains and propose a family of nonparametric estimators for the radius distribution. These estimators are based on observed distances and radii, weighted in an appropriate way. They are ratio unbiased and asymptotically consistent for a growing observation window. We show that the asymptotic variance exists and is given by a fairly explicit integral expression. Asymptotic normality is established under a suitable integrability assumption on the weight function. We also provide a short discussion of related estimators as well as a simulation study.

In this paper we generalize some of the classical results of Rényi and Sulanke (1963), (1964) in the context of spindle convexity. A planar convex disc S is spindle convex if it is the intersection of congruent closed circular discs. The intersection of finitely many congruent closed circular discs is called a disc polygon. We prove asymptotic formulae for the expectation of the number of vertices, missed area, and perimeter difference of uniform random disc polygons contained in a sufficiently smooth spindle convex disc.

The random triangles discussed in this paper are defined by having the directions of their sides independent and uniformly distributed on (0, π). To fix the scale, one side chosen arbitrarily is assigned unit length; let a and b denote the lengths of the other sides. We find the density functions of a / b, max{a, b}, min{a, b}, and of the area of the triangle, the first three explicitly and the last as an elliptic integral. The first two density functions, with supports in (0, ∞) and (½, ∞), respectively, are unusual in having an infinite spike at 1 which is interior to their ranges (the triangle is then isosceles).

We study a parametric class of isotropic but not necessarily stationary Poisson hyperplane tessellations in n-dimensional Euclidean space. Our focus is on the volume of the zero cell, i.e. the cell containing the origin. As a main result, we obtain an explicit formula for the variance of the volume of the zero cell in arbitrary dimensions. From this formula we deduce the asymptotic behaviour of the volume of the zero cell as the dimension goes to ∞.

In this paper we investigate the asymptotic behavior of sequences of successive Steiner and Minkowski symmetrizations. We state an equivalence result between the convergences of those sequences for Minkowski and Steiner symmetrizations. Moreover, in the case of independent (and not necessarily identically distributed) directions, we prove the almost-sure convergence of successive symmetrizations at exponential rate for Minkowski, and at rate with c > 0 for Steiner.

We study translation invariant, real-valued valuations on the class of convex polytopes in Euclidean space and discuss which continuity properties are sufficient for an extension of such valuations to all convex bodies. For this purpose, we introduce flag support measures of convex bodies via a local Steiner formula and derive some of the properties of these measures.

We give a short and elementary proof of an inverse Bernstein-type inequality found by S. Khrushchev for the derivative of a polynomial having all its zeros on the unit circle. The inequality is used to show that equally-spaced points solve a min–max–min problem for the logarithmic potential of such polynomials. Using techniques recently developed for polarization (Chebyshev-type) problems, we show that this optimality also holds for a large class of potentials, including the Riesz potentials $1/r^{s}$ with $s>0.$

The most important open problem in monotone operator theory concerns the maximal monotonicity of the sum of two maximally monotone operators provided that the classical Rockafellar’s constraint qualification holds. In this paper, we establish the maximal monotonicity of $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}A+B$ provided that $A$ and $B$ are maximally monotone operators such that ${\rm star}({\rm dom}\ A)\cap {\rm int}\, {\rm dom}\, B\neq \varnothing $, and $A$ is of type (FPV). We show that when also ${\rm dom}\ A$ is convex, the sum operator $A+B$ is also of type (FPV). Our result generalizes and unifies several recent sum theorems.

We solve a randomized version of the following open question: is there a strictly convex, bounded curve $\gamma \subset { \mathbb{R} }^{2} $ such that the number of rational points on $\gamma $, with denominator $n$, approaches infinity with $n$? Although this natural problem appears to be out of reach using current methods, we consider a probabilistic analogue using a spatial Poisson process that simulates the refined rational lattice $(1/ d){ \mathbb{Z} }^{2} $, which we call ${M}_{d} $, for each natural number $d$. The main result here is that with probability $1$ there exists a strictly convex, bounded curve $\gamma $ such that $\vert \gamma \cap {M}_{d} \vert \rightarrow + \infty , $ as $d$ tends to infinity. The methods include the notion of a generalized affine length of a convex curve as defined by F. V. Petrov [Estimates for the number of rational points on convex curves and surfaces. Zap. Nauchn. Sem. S.-Peterburg. Otdel. Mat. Inst. Steklov. (POMI) 344 (2007), 174–189; Engl. transl. J. Math. Sci. 147(6) (2007), 7218–7226].

Let ${\mathrm{OT} }_{d} (n)$ be the smallest integer $N$ such that every $N$-element point sequence in ${ \mathbb{R} }^{d} $ in general position contains an order-type homogeneous subset of size $n$, where a set is order-type homogeneous if all $(d+ 1)$-tuples from this set have the same orientation. It is known that a point sequence in ${ \mathbb{R} }^{d} $ that is order-type homogeneous, forms the vertex set of a convex polytope that is combinatorially equivalent to a cyclic polytope in ${ \mathbb{R} }^{d} $. Two famous theorems of Erdős and Szekeres from 1935 imply that ${\mathrm{OT} }_{1} (n)= \Theta ({n}^{2} )$ and ${\mathrm{OT} }_{2} (n)= {2}^{\Theta (n)} $. For $d\geq 3$, we give new bounds for ${\mathrm{OT} }_{d} (n)$. In particular, we show that ${\mathrm{OT} }_{3} (n)= {2}^{{2}^{\Theta (n)} } $, answering a question of Eliáš and Matoušek, and, for $d\geq 4$, we show that ${\mathrm{OT} }_{d} (n)$ is bounded above by an exponential tower of height $d$ with $O(n)$ in the topmost exponent.

The vertices of the convex hull of a uniform sample from the interior of a convex polygon are known to be concentrated close to the vertices of the polygon. Furthermore, the remaining area of the polygon outside of the convex hull is concentrated close to the vertices of the polygon. In order to see what happens in a corner of the polygon given by two adjacent edges, we consider—in view of affine invariance—n points P 1,…, P n distributed independently and uniformly in the interior of the triangle with vertices (0, 1), (0, 0), and (1, 0). The number of vertices of the convex hull, which are close to the origin (0, 0), is then given by the number Ñ n of points among P 1,…, P n , which are vertices of the convex hull of (0, 1), P 1,…, P n , and (1, 0). Correspondingly, D̃ n is defined as the remaining area of the triangle outside of this convex hull. We derive exact (nonasymptotic) formulae for var Ñ n and var . These formulae are in line with asymptotic distribution results in Groeneboom (1988), Nagaev and Khamdamov (1991), and Groeneboom (2012), as well as with recent results in Pardon (2011), (2012).

For an arbitrary subset $X$ of a finite-dimensional real Banach space $E$, the ball intersection with parameter $\lambda \gt 0$ is defined as the intersection of all balls of radius $\lambda $ whose centers are in $X$. On the other hand, the intersection of all balls of radius $\lambda $ that contain $X$ is said to be the respective ball hull. We present new results on these two notions and use them to get new insights into complete sets and (pairs of) sets of constant width, e.g., their representation as vector sums of suitable ball intersections and ball hulls. Also in this framework, we give partial answers to the known question, in what finite-dimensional real Banach spaces any complete set is of constant width. For polyhedral norms we obtain characterizations of monotypic balls via constant width properties of pairs formed by the ball intersection and ball hull of the same bounded and non-empty set. Finally, we present some new results on Borsuk numbers of sets of constant width in normed spaces, closely related to (unique) completions of compact sets. For example, the lower estimate on Borsuk numbers of bodies of constant width due to Lenz is extended to arbitrary normed spaces. Furthermore, we also derive the Borsuk number of the normed space with maximum norm.

For a Borel set A and a homogeneous Poisson point process η in of intensity λ>0, define the Poisson–Voronoi approximation A η of A as a union of all Voronoi cells with nuclei from η lying in A. If A has a finite volume and perimeter, we find an exact asymptotic of E Vol(AΔ A η) as λ→∞, where Vol is the Lebesgue measure. Estimates for all moments of Vol(A η) and Vol(AΔ A η) together with their asymptotics for large λ are obtained as well.

We show that if d≥4 is even, then one can find two essentially different convex bodies such that the volumes of their maximal sections, central sections, and projections coincide for all directions.

We consider the convex hull ℬk of the symmetric moment curve Uk(t)=(cos t,sin t,cos 3t,sin 3t,…,cos (2k−1)t,sin (2k−1)t) in ℝ2k, where t ranges over the unit circle 𝕊=ℝ/2πℤ. The curve Uk(t) is locally neighborly: as long as t1,…,tk lie in an open arc of 𝕊 of a certain length ϕk>0 , the convex hull of the points Uk (t1),…,Uk (tk)is a face of ℬk. We characterize the maximum possible length ϕk, proving, in particular, that ϕk >π/2for all k and that the limit of ϕk is π/2as k grows. This allows us to construct centrally symmetric polytopes with a record number of faces.

We study the question of whether every centred convex body K of volume 1 in ℝn has “supergaussian directions”, which means θ∈Sn−1 such that for all , where c>0 is an absolute constant. We verify that a “random” direction is indeed supergaussian for isotropic convex bodies that satisfy the hyperplane conjecture. On the other hand, we show that if, for all isotropic convex bodies, a random direction is supergaussian then the hyperplane conjecture follows.

We prove large deviation results for Minkowski sums S n of independent and identically distributed random compact sets where we assume that the summands have a regularly varying distribution and finite expectation. The main focus is on random convex compact sets. The results confirm the heavy-tailed large deviation heuristics: ‘large’ values of the sum are essentially due to the ‘largest’ summand. These results extend those in Mikosch, Pawlas and Samorodnitsky (2011) for generally nonconvex sets, where we assumed that the normalization of S n grows faster than n.

An orbitope is the convex hull of an orbit of a compact group acting linearly on a vector space. These highly symmetric convex bodies lie at the crossroads of several fields, including convex geometry, algebraic geometry, and optimization. We present a self-contained theory of orbitopes, with particular emphasis on instances arising from the groups SO(n) and O(n); these include Schur–Horn orbitopes, tautological orbitopes, Carathéodory orbitopes, Veronese orbitopes, and Grassmann orbitopes. We study their face lattices, algebraic boundaries, and representations as spectrahedra or projected spectrahedra.