English

A BKR operation for events occurring for disjoint reasons with high probability

Probability 2018-02-28 v3 Combinatorics

Abstract

Given events AA and BB on a product space S=i=1nSiS=\prod_{i=1}^n S_i, the set ABA \Box B consists of all vectors x=(x1,,xn)S{\bf x}=(x_1,\ldots,x_n) \in S for which there exist disjoint coordinate subsets KK and LL of {1,,n}\{1,\ldots,n\} such that given the coordinates xi,iKx_i, i \in K one has that xA{\bf x} \in A regardless of the values of x{\bf x} on the remaining coordinates, and likewise that xB{\bf x} \in B given the coordinates {xj,jLx_j, j \in L}. For a finite product of discrete spaces endowed with a product measure, the BKR inequality P(AB)P(A)P(B)(1) P(A \Box B) \le P(A)P(B) \quad (1) was conjectured by van den Berg and Kesten [3] and proved by Reimer [13]. In [7] inequality (1) was extended to general product probability spaces, replacing ABA \Box B by the set A11BA \Box_{11} B consisting of those outcomes x{\bf x} which only assure with probability one that xA{\bf x} \in A and xB{\bf x} \in B based only on the revealed coordinates in KK and LL as above. A strengthening of the original BKR inequality (1) results, due to the fact that ABA11BA \Box B \subseteq A \Box_{11} B. In particular, it may be the case that ABA \Box B is empty, while A11BA \Box_{11} B is not. We propose the further extension AstBA \Box_{st} B depending on probability thresholds ss and tt, where A11BA \Box_{11} B is the special case where both ss and tt take the value one. The outcomes x{\bf x} in AstBA \Box_{st} B are those for which disjoint sets of coordinates KK and LL exist such that given the values of x\bf x on the revealed set of coordinates KK, the probability that AA occurs is at least ss, and given the coordinates of x\bf x in LL, the probability of BB is at least tt. We provide simple examples that illustrate the utility of these extensions.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1608.05612,
  title  = {A BKR operation for events occurring for disjoint reasons with high probability},
  author = {Larry Goldstein and Yosef Rinott},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.05612},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

Corrections and clarifications on measurability issues. 15 pages. To appear in: Methodology and Computing in Applied Probability, Special Issue: In Memory of Moshe Shaked