Allometry constants of finite-dimensional spaces: Theory and computations (Q2391127)

The author describes the computation of some intrinsic constants associated with an \(n\)-dimensional normed space \(\mathcal V\), namely the \(N\)-th allometry constants \[ K_{\infty}^N(\mathcal V):=\inf \{\|T\|.\|T'\|,T:l_{\infty}^N \rightarrow \mathcal V, T':\mathcal V \rightarrow l_{\infty}^N,TT'=I_{\mathcal V}\}, \] where \(N \geq n.\) These are related to Banach-Mazur distances and to several types of projection constants. The author explains the general principles in the computation of allometry constants and absolute condition numbers. The code itself is a collection of Matlab routines that is available on the author's website; it relies heavily on the optimization toolbox in Matlab. Most of the paper consists of the mathematical derivation of a number of results on best-conditioned bases in low-dimensional spaces. Proofs are rigorous and carefully written out.