On some numbers related to extremal combinatorial sum problems (Q2249958)

Summary: Let \(n\), \(d\), and \(r\) be three integers such that \(1\leq r, d\leq n\). \textit{G. Chiaselotti} [Eur. J. Comb. 23, No. 1, 15--22 (2002; Zbl 0998.05064)] defined \(\gamma (n, d, r)\) as the minimum number of the nonnegative partial sums with \(d\) summands of a sum \(\sum_{i=1}^na_i\geq 0\), where \(a_1,\dots,a_n\) are \(n\) real numbers arbitrarily chosen in such a way that \(r\) of them are nonnegative and the remaining \(n-r\) are negative. Chiaselotti [loc. cit.] and \textit{G. Chiaselotti} et al. [Eur. J. Comb. 29, No. 2, 361--368 (2008; Zbl 1131.05093)] determined the values of \(\gamma (n, d, r)\) for particular infinite ranges of the integer parameters \(n\), \(d\), and \(r\). In this paper we continue their approach on this problem and we prove the following results: (i) \(\gamma (n, d, r)\leq {r \choose d}{r \choose {d-1}}\) for all values of \(n\), \(d\), and \(r\) such that \(((d-1)/d)(n-1)\leq ((d-1)/d)n\); (ii) \(\gamma (d+2, d, d)=d+1\).