Most subsets are balanced in finite groups

DOI10.1007/978-1-4939-1601-6_11MaRDI QIDQ5265395zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Steven J. Miller, Kevin Vissuet

Publication date 23 July 2015

Published in Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1308.2344

zbMATH Keywords

dihedral groupfinite abelian groupsmore sum than difference setsMSTDsum-dominant and difference-dominant setssumsets

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Combinatorial aspects of difference sets (number-theoretic, group-theoretic, etc.) (05B10) Additive bases, including sumsets (11B13) Other combinatorial number theory (11B75)

Abstract: The sumset is one of the most basic and central objects in additive number theory. Many of the most important problems (such as Goldbach's conjecture and Fermat's Last theorem) can be formulated in terms of the sumset $S+S=x+y:x,yinS$ of a set of integers $S$. A finite set of integers $A$ is sum-dominated if $|A+A|>|A-A|$. Though it was believed that the percentage of subsets of $0,\mathrm{...},n$ that are sum-dominated tends to zero, in 2006 Martin and O'Bryant proved a very small positive percentage are sum-dominated if the sets are chosen uniformly at random (through work of Zhao we know this percentage is approximately $4.5cdot10^{-4}$). While most sets are difference-dominated in the integer case, this is not the case when we take subsets of many finite groups. We show that if we take subsets of larger and larger finite groups uniformly at random, then not only does the probability of a set being sum-dominated tend to zero but the probability that $|A+A|=|A-A|$ tends to one, and hence a typical set is balanced in this case. The cause of this marked difference in behavior is that subsets of $0,\mathrm{...},n$ have a fringe, whereas finite groups do not. We end with a detailed analysis of dihedral groups, where the results are in striking contrast to what occurs for subsets of integers.

Recommendations

• Many sets have more sums than differences
• Sum-dominant sets and restricted-sum-dominant sets in finite abelian groups
• Sets with more differences than sums
• On sets with more restricted sums than differences
• When almost all sets are difference dominated in \(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}\)

Cited in

(10)

• On sets with more products than quotients
• Generalizing the distribution of missing sums in sumsets
• Sum-dominant sets and restricted-sum-dominant sets in finite abelian groups
• When sets can and cannot have sum-dominant subsets
• Fringe pairs in generalized MSTD sets
• Distribution of Missing Differences in Diffsets
• Sets of cardinality 6 are not sum-dominant
• When almost all sets are difference dominated in \(\mathbb{Z}/n\mathbb{Z}\)
• Many sets have more sums than differences
• Sum and difference sets in generalized quaternion groups

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