English

Counterintuitive patterns on angles and distances between lattice points in high dimensional hypercubes

Combinatorics 2023-09-28 v1 Number Theory

Abstract

Let S\mathcal{S} be a finite set of integer points in Rd\mathbb{R}^d, which we assume has many symmetries, and let PRdP\in\mathbb{R}^d be a fixed point. We calculate the distances from PP to the points in S\mathcal{S} and compare the results. In some of the most common cases, we find that they lead to unexpected conclusions if the dimension is sufficiently large. For example, if S\mathcal{S} is the set of vertices of a hypercube in Rd\mathbb{R}^d and PP is any point inside, then almost all triangles PABPAB with A,BSA,B\in\mathcal{S} are almost equilateral. Or, if PP is close to the center of the cube, then almost all triangles PABPAB with ASA\in \mathcal{S} and BB anywhere in the hypercube are almost right triangles.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2309.15338,
  title  = {Counterintuitive patterns on angles and distances between lattice points in high dimensional hypercubes},
  author = {Jack Anderson and Cristian Cobeli and Alexandru Zaharescu},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2309.15338},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

16 pages, 1 figure

R2 v1 2026-06-28T12:33:18.334Z