We study a version of the Busemann-Petty problem for $\log $-concave measures with an additional assumption on the dilates of convex, symmetric bodies. One of our main tools is an analog of the classical large deviation principle applied to $\log $-concave measures, depending on the norm of a convex body. We hope this will be of independent interest.

Let $\hat {\mathbb {R}}^n$ be the one-point compactification of $\mathbb {R}^n$ obtained by adding a point at infinity. We say that a subset $A\subseteq \hat {\mathbb {R}}^n$ is $\mathbf {u}$-convex if for every pair of points $\mathbf {z}_1, \mathbf {z}_2 \in A$, the arc of the unique circle through $\mathbf {u}, \mathbf {z}_1$ and $\mathbf {z}_2$, from $\mathbf {z}_1$ to $\mathbf {z}_2$ and not containing $\mathbf {u}$, is contained in A. In this case, we call $\mathbf {u}$ a pole of A. When the pole $\mathbf {u}$ approaches infinity, $\mathbf {u}$-convex sets become convex in the classical sense.

The notion of polar convexity in the complex plane has been used to analyze the behavior of critical points of polynomials. In this paper, we extend the notion to finite-dimensional Euclidean spaces. The goal of this paper is to start building the theory of polar convexity and to show that the introduction of a pole creates a richer theory. For example, polar convexity enjoys a beautiful duality (see Theorem 4.3) that does not exist in classical convexity. We formulate polar analogues of several classical results of the alternatives, such as Gordan’s and Farkas’ lemmas; see Section 5. Finally, we give a full description of the convex hull of finitely many points with respect to finitely many poles; see Theorem 6.7.

Main results of the paper are as follows:

(1) For any finite metric space $M$ the Lipschitz-free space on $M$ contains a large well-complemented subspace that is close to $\ell _{1}^{n}$.

(2) Lipschitz-free spaces on large classes of recursively defined sequences of graphs are not uniformly isomorphic to $\ell _{1}^{n}$ of the corresponding dimensions. These classes contain well-known families of diamond graphs and Laakso graphs.

Interesting features of our approach are: (a) We consider averages over groups of cycle-preserving bijections of edge sets of graphs that are not necessarily graph automorphisms. (b) In the case of such recursive families of graphs as Laakso graphs, we use the well-known approach of Grünbaum (1960) and Rudin (1962) for estimating projection constants in the case where invariant projections are not unique.

Our main result states that whenever we have a non-Euclidean norm $\Vert \cdot \Vert$ on a two-dimensional vector space $X$, there exists some $x\neq 0$ such that for every $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}\neq 1$, $\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}>0$, there exist $y,z\in X$ satisfying $\Vert y\Vert =\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}\Vert x\Vert$, $z\neq 0$ and $z$ belongs to the bisectors $B(-x,x)$ and $B(-y,y)$. We also give several results about the geometry of the unit sphere of strictly convex planes.

For a fixed $K\,\gg \,1$ and $n\,\in \,\mathbb{N}$, $n\,\gg \,1$ we study metric spaces which admit embeddings with distortion $\le \,K$ into each $n$-dimensional Banach space. Classical examples include spaces embeddable into log $n$-dimensional Euclidean spaces, and equilateral spaces.

We prove that good embeddability properties are preserved under the operation of metric composition of metric spaces. In particular, we prove that $n$-point ultrametrics can be embedded with uniformly bounded distortions into arbitrary Banach spaces of dimension $\log \,n$.

The main result of the paper is a new example of a family of finite metric spaces which are not metric compositions of classical examples and which do embed with uniformly bounded distortion into any Banach space of dimension $n$. This partially answers a question of G. Schechtman.

The relative projection constant${\it\lambda}(Y,X)$ of normed spaces $Y\subset X$ is ${\it\lambda}(Y,X)=\inf \{\Vert P\Vert :P\in {\mathcal{P}}(X,Y)\}$, where ${\mathcal{P}}(X,Y)$ denotes the set of all continuous projections from $X$ onto $Y$. By the well-known result of Bohnenblust, for every $n$-dimensional normed space $X$ and a subspace $Y\subset X$ of codimension one, ${\it\lambda}(Y,X)\leq 2-2/n$. The main goal of the paper is to study the equality case in the theorem of Bohnenblust. We establish an equivalent condition for the equality ${\it\lambda}(Y,X)=2-2/n$ and present several applications. We prove that every three-dimensional space has a subspace with the projection constant less than $\frac{4}{3}-0.0007$. This gives a nontrivial upper bound in the problem posed by Bosznay and Garay. In the general case, we give an upper bound for the number of ($n-1$)-dimensional subspaces with the maximal relative projection constant in terms of the facets of the unit ball of $X$. As a consequence, every $n$-dimensional normed space $X$ has an ($n-1$)-dimensional subspace $Y$ with ${\it\lambda}(Y,X)<2-2/n$. This contrasts with the separable case in which it is possible that every hyperplane has a maximal possible projection constant.

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.

A well-known theorem of Schütte (1963) gives a sharp lower bound for the ratio of the maximum and minimum distances between $n\,+\,2$ points in $n$-dimensional Euclidean space. In this note we adapt Bárány’s elegant proof (1994) of this theorem to the space $\ell _{4}^{n}$. This gives a new proof that the largest cardinality of an equilateral set in $\ell _{4}^{n}$ is $n\,+\,1$ and gives a constructive bound for an interval $\left( 4\,-\,{{\varepsilon }_{n}},\,4\,+\,{{\varepsilon }_{n}} \right)$ of values of $p$ close to 4 for which it is known that the largest cardinality of an equilateral set in $\ell _{p}^{n}$ is $n\,+\,1$.

We extend the notion of Zindler curve from the Euclidean plane to normed planes. A characterization of Zindler curves for general normed planes is given, and the relation between Zindler curves and curves of constant area-halving distances in such planes is discussed.

Let ${{B}_{Y}}$ denote the unit ball of a normed linear space $Y$. A symmetric, bounded, closed, convex set $A$ in a finite dimensional normed linear space $X$ is called a sufficient enlargement for $X$ if, for an arbitrary isometric embedding of $X$ into a Banach space $Y$, there exists a linear projection $P:\,Y\,\to \,X$ such that $P({{B}_{Y}})\,\subset \,A$. Each finite dimensional normed space has a minimal-volume sufficient enlargement that is a parallelepiped; some spaces have “exotic” minimal-volume sufficient enlargements. The main result of the paper is a characterization of spaces having “exotic” minimal-volume sufficient enlargements in terms of Auerbach bases.

In this paper, we establish an extended Loomis–Whitney inequality for positive double John bases, which generalises Ball's result [1]. Moreover, a different extension of the Loomis–Whitney inequality is deduced.

By $\text{d(X,Y)}$ we denote the (multiplicative) Banach–Mazur distance between two normed spaces $X$ and $Y$. Let $X$ be an $n$-dimensional normed space with $\text{d(X,}\,l_{\infty }^{n}\text{)}\,\le \,\text{2}$, where $l_{\infty }^{n}$ stands for ${{\mathbb{R}}^{n}}$ endowed with the norm $\parallel ({{x}_{1}},\,.\,.\,.\,,\,{{x}_{n}}){{\parallel }_{\infty }}\,:=\,\max \{|{{x}_{1}}|,\,.\,.\,.\,,\,|{{x}_{n}}|\}$. Then every metric space $(S,\,\rho )$ of cardinality $n+1$ with norm $\rho $ satisfying the condition $\max D/\min D\,\le \,2/\,\text{d(}X,\,l_{\infty }^{n}\text{)}$ for $D\,:=\,\{\rho (a,\,b)\,:\,a,\,b\,\in \,S,\,a\,\ne \,b\}$ can be isometrically embedded into $X$.

We prove that for any given integer c≥0 any metric space on n points may be isometrically embedded into ln−c∞ provided n is large enough.

We investigate the following version of the circle covering problem in strictly convex (normed or) Minkowski planes: to cover a circle of largest possible diameter by $k$ unit circles. In particular, we study the cases $k\,=\,3$, $k\,=\,4$, and $k\,=\,7$. For $k\,=\,3$ and $k\,=\,4$, the diameters under consideration are described in terms of side-lengths and circumradii of certain inscribed regular triangles or quadrangles. This yields also simple explanations of geometric meanings that the corresponding homothety ratios have. It turns out that basic notions from Minkowski geometry play an essential role in our proofs, namely Minkowskian bisectors, $d$-segments, and the monotonicity lemma.

The Bezdek–Pach conjecture asserts that the maximum number of pairwise touching positive homothetic copies of a convex body in ${{\mathbb{R}}^{d}}$ is ${{2}^{d}}$. Naszódi proved that the quantity in question is not larger than ${{2}^{d+1}}$. We present an improvement to this result by proving the upper bound $3\,\cdot \,{{2}^{d-1}}$ for centrally symmetric bodies. Bezdek and Brass introduced the one-sided Hadwiger number of a convex body. We extend this definition, prove an upper bound on the resulting quantity, and show a connection with the problem of touching homothetic bodies.

Suppose that we have the unit Euclidean ball in ${{\mathbb{R}}^{n}}$ and construct new bodies using three operations — linear transformations, closure in the radial metric, and multiplicative summation defined by ${{\left\| x \right\|}_{K+0L}}\,=\,\sqrt{{{\left\| x \right\|}_{K}}{{\left\| x \right\|}_{L}}}$. We prove that in dimension 3 this procedure gives all origin-symmetric convex bodies, while this is no longer true in dimensions 4 and higher. We introduce the concept of embedding of a normed space in ${{L}_{0}}$ that naturally extends the corresponding properties of ${{L}_{P}}$-spaces with $p\,\ne \,0$, and show that the procedure described above gives exactly the unit balls of subspaces of ${{L}_{0}}$ in every dimension. We provide Fourier analytic and geometric characterizations of spaces embedding in ${{L}_{0}}$, and prove several facts confirming the place of ${{L}_{0}}$ in the scale of ${{L}_{P}}$-spaces.

We prove that a Minkowski plane is Euclidean if and only if Busemann's or Glogovskij's definitions of angular bisectors coincide with a bisector defined by an angular measure in the sense of Brass. In addition, bisectors defined by the area measure coincide with bisectors defined by the circumference (arc length) measure if and only if the unit circle is an equiframed curve.

The zonoid of a d-dimensional random vector is used as a tool for measuring linear dependence among its components. A preorder of linear dependence is defined through inclusion of the zonoids. The zonoid of a random vector does not characterize its distribution, but it does characterize the size-biased distribution of its compositional variables. This fact will allow a characterization of our linear dependence order in terms of a linear-convex order for the size-biased compositional variables. In dimension 2 the linear dependence preorder will be shown to be weaker than the concordance order. Some examples related to the Marshall-Olkin distribution and to a copula model will be presented, and a class of measures of linear dependence will be proposed.

Let X1, X2, …, XN be Banach spaces and ψ a continuous convex function with some appropriate conditions on a certain convex set in RN−1. Let (X1⊕X2⊕…⊕XN)Ψ be the direct sum of X1, X2, …, XN equipped with the norm associated with Ψ. We characterize the strict, uniform, and locally uniform convexity of (X1 ⊕ X2 ⊕ … ⊕ XN)Ψ; by means of the convex function Ψ. As an application these convexities are characterized for the ℓp, q-sum (X1 ⊕ X2 ⊕ … ⊕ XN)p, q (1 < q ≤ p ≤ ∈, q < ∞), which includes the well-known facts for the ℓp-sum (X1 ⊕ X2 ⊕ … ⊕ XN)p in the case p = q.

We study the dimension of “random” Euclidean sections of direct sums of normed spaces. We compare the obtained results with results from $[\text{LMS}]$, to show that for the direct sums the standard randomness with respect to the Haar measure on Grassmanian coincides with a much “weaker” randomness of “diagonal” subspaces (Corollary 1.4 and explanation after). We also add some relative information on “phase transition”.