Sperner's theorem

From Polymath Wiki
Revision as of 10:40, 15 February 2009 by Teorth (talk | contribs) (New page: '''Sperner's theorem''': Any line-free subset of <math>[2]^n</math> has cardinality at most <math>\binom{n}{\lfloor n/2\rfloor}</math>. It implies the k=2 version of the [[density Ha...)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigationJump to search

Sperner's theorem: Any line-free subset of [math]\displaystyle{ [2]^n }[/math] has cardinality at most [math]\displaystyle{ \binom{n}{\lfloor n/2\rfloor} }[/math].

It implies the k=2 version of the density Hales-Jewett theorem.

A stronger version of Sperner's theorem is

LYM inequality: Any line-free subset of [math]\displaystyle{ [2]^n }[/math] has equal-slices measure at most 1.

The k=3 generalisation of this inequality is the hyper-optimistic conjecture.

The LYM inequality can be proven as follows. Randomly shuffle the n indices and then consider the intersection of A with the strings [math]\displaystyle{ 0^i 1^{n-i} }[/math] for [math]\displaystyle{ i=0,\ldots,n }[/math]. As A is line-free, at most one of these strings lie in A. Averaging over all choice of shuffles we obtain the claim.