Cutting the same fraction of several measures (Q1943648)

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Cutting the same fraction of several measures
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    Cutting the same fraction of several measures (English)
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    20 March 2013
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    The main results of the paper concern partitions of absolutely continuous probability measures in \( {\mathbb R}^d \). Under some additional combinatorial assumptions (similar to (ii) in the Theorem 4) the authors prove that: If \(\mu_0, \mu_1, \dots \mu_d \) are absolutely continuous probability measures in \( {\mathbb R}^d \), and \( \varepsilon \in (0, 1/2)\) then there exists a halfspace \( H \) such that \[ \mu_0 (H) = \mu_1 (H) = \dots = \mu_d (H) \in [ \varepsilon , 1/2 ]. \] This is the Theorem 1, it implies the following: Corollary 1. Suppose \( \mu_1, \dots \mu_d \) are absolutely continuous probability measures in \( {\mathbb R}^d \) and \( p \) is a point in the convex hull of their supports. Then there exists a halfspace \( H \) such that \[ \mu_1 (H) = \mu_2 (H) = \dots = \mu_d (H) \] and \( p \in \partial H\). The authors consider also the problem about cutting the same fraction of several measures: Theorem 5. Suppose \(\mu_0, \mu_1, \dots \mu_d \) are absolutely continuous probability measures on \( {\mathbb R}^d \) and \( \alpha \in (0, 1) \). It is always possible to find a convex subset \( C \subset {\mathbb R}^d \) such that \[ \mu_0 (C) = \mu_1 (C) = \dots = \mu_d (C) = \alpha, \] if and only if \( \alpha = 1/m\) for a positive integer \( m \). They also study a discrete version of the Theorem 1: Theorem 4. Let \( S \) be a set of \((d+1)n \) points in \( {\mathbb R}^d \) in general position partitioned into colors \( S = S_0 \cup S_1 \cup \dots \cup S_d\) so that {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize}\item[(i)] the number of points in each \( S_i \) is \( n \); \item[(ii)] for any directed line \( { \ell }\) there exist two colors \( i \) and \( j \), \( i < j \), and a point \( x \in S_i\) such that for any \( y \in S_j \) we have \( y \leq_{\ell} x\). \end{itemize}} Then there exists a balanced hyperplane \( h \), or in other words, a hyperplane such that each halfspace bounded by \( h \) contains precisely the same number of points of each color.
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    probability measure
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    balanced partition
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    the ham sandwich theorem
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