Kruskal-Katona for convex sets, with applications

The well-known Kruskal-Katona theorem in combinatorics says that (under mild conditions) every monotone Boolean function $f: \{0,1\}^n \to \{0,1\}$ has a nontrivial "density increment." This means that the fraction of inputs of Hamming weight $k+1$ for which $f=1$ is significantly larger than the fraction of inputs of Hamming weight $k$ for which $f=1.$ We prove an analogous statement for convex sets. Informally, our main result says that (under mild conditions) every convex set $K \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ has a nontrivial density increment. This means that the fraction of the radius-$r$ sphere that lies within $K$ is significantly larger than the fraction of the radius-$r'$ sphere that lies within $K$, for $r'$ suitably larger than $r$. For centrally symmetric convex sets we show that our density increment result is essentially optimal. As a consequence of our Kruskal-Katona type theorem, we obtain the first efficient weak learning algorithm for convex sets under the Gaussian distribution. We show that any convex set can be weak learned to advantage $\Omega(1/n)$ in $\mathsf{poly}(n)$ time under any Gaussian distribution and that any centrally symmetric convex set can be weak learned to advantage $\Omega(1/\sqrt{n})$ in $\mathsf{poly}(n)$ time. We also give an information-theoretic lower bound showing that the latter advantage is essentially optimal for $\mathsf{poly}(n)$ time weak learning algorithms. As another consequence of our Kruskal-Katona theorem, we give the first nontrivial Gaussian noise stability bounds for convex sets at high noise rates. Our results extend the known correspondence between monotone Boolean functions over $\{0,1\}^n$ and convex bodies in Gaussian space.