A continuous analogue of the upper bound theorem (Q5946379)

Let \(X_1X_2, \dots\) be an iid sequence of random points in \(\mathbb{R}^d\), distributed according to an absolutely continuous probability measure \(\mu\). For \(k=0,1, \dots\), let \(p_k(\mu)\) be the probability that the convex hull of \(X_1,\dots, X_{d+1+k}\) contains the origin. In this interesting paper, the authors show that \[ p_k(\mu)\leq 2^{-(d+k)} \sum^k_{i=0} {d+k \choose i}, \] with equality if and only if \(\mu\) is balanced about the origin (i.e. the radial projection of \(\mu\) onto the unit sphere is an even measure). The proof is based on a suitably defined \(h\)-function which shows some analogy with the \(h\)-vector of simplicial polytopes. In fact, the authors make this analogy more precise such that the above inequality can be considered as a continuous analogue of the upper bound theorem.