Cyclic minimum correlation problem (Q1079130)

For variables (x,y,z) in \([0,1]^ 3\), three functions A(y,z), B(z,x), C(x,y), with values in [0,1], are to be chosen to minimize the integral, over (x,y,z) in the unit cube, of \(AB+BC+CA\), subject to prescribed values for the integral of each function. It is shown that a minimum can be achieved by dividing each of the x, y, z intervals into three or fewer subintervals and taking each of A, B, C as indicator function of the union of some of the nine (or fewer) rectangles into which this divides its domain. Several specializations and generalizations of this problem are given consideration. It can be considered as a decision problem with distributed information.