In the classical setting, we aim at partitioning the vertices of a hypergraph H = ( V , E ) {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}=(V,{\mathcal {E}})} into two classes in such a way that ideally each hyperedge contains the same number of vertices in both classes. A partition into two classes can be represented by a coloring χ : V → { − 1 , + 1 } {\displaystyle \chi \colon V\rightarrow \{-1,+1\}} . We call −1 and +1 colors. The color-classes χ − 1 ( − 1 ) {\displaystyle \chi ^{-1}(-1)} and χ − 1 ( + 1 ) {\displaystyle \chi ^{-1}(+1)} form the corresponding partition. For a hyperedge E ∈ E {\displaystyle E\in {\mathcal {E}}} , set
The discrepancy of H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} with respect to χ {\displaystyle \chi } and the discrepancy of H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} are defined by
These notions as well as the term 'discrepancy' seem to have appeared for the first time in a paper of Beck.1 Earlier results on this problem include the famous lower bound on the discrepancy of arithmetic progressions by Roth2 and upper bounds for this problem and other results by Erdős and Spencer34 and Sárközi.5: 39 At that time, discrepancy problems were called quasi-Ramsey problems.
To get some intuition for this concept, let's have a look at a few examples.
The last example shows that we cannot expect to determine the discrepancy by looking at a single parameter like the number of hyperedges. Still, the size of the hypergraph yields first upper bounds.
1. For any hypergraph H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} with n vertices and m edges:
The proof is a simple application of the probabilistic method. Let χ : V → { − 1 , 1 } {\displaystyle \chi :V\rightarrow \{-1,1\}} be a random coloring, i.e. we have
independently for all v ∈ V {\displaystyle v\in V} . Since χ ( E ) = ∑ v ∈ E χ ( v ) {\displaystyle \chi (E)=\sum _{v\in E}\chi (v)} is a sum of independent −1, 1 random variables. So we have Pr ( | χ ( E ) | > λ ) < 2 exp ( − λ 2 / ( 2 n ) ) {\displaystyle \Pr(|\chi (E)|>\lambda )<2\exp(-\lambda ^{2}/(2n))} for all E ⊆ V {\displaystyle E\subseteq V} and λ ≥ 0 {\displaystyle \lambda \geq 0} . Taking λ = 2 n ln ( 2 m ) {\displaystyle \lambda ={\sqrt {2n\ln(2m)}}} gives
Since a random coloring with positive probability has discrepancy at most λ {\displaystyle \lambda } , in particular, there are colorings that have discrepancy at most λ {\displaystyle \lambda } . Hence disc ( H ) ≤ λ . ◻ {\displaystyle \operatorname {disc} ({\mathcal {H}})\leq \lambda .\ \Box }
2. For any hypergraph H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} with n vertices and m edges such that m ≥ n {\displaystyle m\geq n} :
To prove this, a much more sophisticated approach using the entropy function was necessary. Of course this is particularly interesting for m = O ( n ) {\displaystyle m=O(n)} . In the case m = n {\displaystyle m=n} , disc ( H ) ≤ 6 n {\displaystyle \operatorname {disc} ({\mathcal {H}})\leq 6{\sqrt {n}}} can be shown for n large enough. Therefore, this result is usually known to as 'Six Standard Deviations Suffice'. It is considered to be one of the milestones of discrepancy theory. The entropy method has seen numerous other applications, e.g. in the proof of the tight upper bound for the arithmetic progressions of Matoušek and Spencer6 or the upper bound in terms of the primal shatter function due to Matoušek.7
Better discrepancy bounds can be attained when the hypergraph has a bounded degree, that is, each vertex of H {\displaystyle {\mathcal {H}}} is contained in at most t edges, for some small t. In particular:
Better bounds on the discrepancy are possible for hypergraphs with a special structure, such as:
J. Beck: "Roth's estimate of the discrepancy of integer sequences is nearly sharp", page 319-325. Combinatorica, 1, 1981 /wiki/Combinatorica ↩
K. F. Roth: "Remark concerning integer sequences", pages 257–260. Acta Arithmetica 9, 1964 /wiki/Acta_Arithmetica ↩
J. Spencer: "A remark on coloring integers", pages 43–44. Canadian Mathematical Bulletin 15, 1972. /wiki/Canadian_Mathematical_Bulletin ↩
P. Erdős and J. Spencer: "Imbalances in k-colorations", pages 379–385. Networks 1, 1972. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.210.7286&rep=rep1&type=pdf ↩
P. Erdős and J. Spencer: "Probabilistic Methods in Combinatorics." Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1974. /wiki/Akad%C3%A9miai_Kiad%C3%B3 ↩
J. Matoušek and J. Spencer: "Discrepancy in arithmetic progressions", pages 195–204. Journal of the American Mathematical Society 9, 1996. /wiki/Journal_of_the_American_Mathematical_Society ↩
J. Matoušek: "Tight upper bound for the discrepancy of half-spaces", pages 593–601. Discrepancy and Computational Geometry 13, 1995. ↩
J. Beck and T. Fiala: "Integer making theorems", pages 1–8. Discrete Applied Mathematics 3, 1981. /wiki/Discrete_Applied_Mathematics ↩
D. Bednarchak and M. Helm: "A note on the Beck-Fiala theorem", pages 147–149. Combinatorica 17, 1997. /wiki/Combinatorica ↩
M. Helm: "On the Beck-Fiala theorem", page 207. Discrete Mathematics 207, 1999. /wiki/Discrete_Mathematics_(journal) ↩
B. Bukh: "An Improvement of the Beck–Fiala Theorem", pp. 380-398. Combinatorics, Probability and Computing 25, 2016. /wiki/Combinatorics,_Probability_and_Computing ↩
Banaszczyk, W. (1998), "Balancing vectors and Gaussian measure of n-dimensional convex bodies", Random Structures & Algorithms, 12: 351–360, doi:10.1002/(SICI)1098-2418(199807)12:4<351::AID-RSA3>3.0.CO;2-S. /wiki/Doi_(identifier) ↩
Bansal, Nikhil; Dadush, Daniel; Garg, Shashwat (January 2019). "An Algorithm for Komlós Conjecture Matching Banaszczyk's Bound". SIAM Journal on Computing. 48 (2): 534–553. doi:10.1137/17M1126795. ISSN 0097-5397. https://epubs.siam.org/doi/10.1137/17M1126795 ↩