On a characterization of balanced matroids. (Q2716004)

A graph \(G\) is balanced if its density (average degree) is at least as large as the density of any subgraph of \(G\).NEWLINENEWLINE\textit{N. Veerapandiyan} and \textit{S. Arumugam} [Ars Comb.\ 32, 221-223 (1991; Zbl 0761.05080)] noted that \(G\) is balanced iff all components of \(G\) are balanced and their density equals that of \(G\). In the present note, an analogous result is verified for (loopless) matroids, where the density of a matroid \(M=(E, \mathcal F)\) is \(| M| /\rho (M)\), where \(\rho \) is the rank function.