On concentrators and related approximation constants

Pippenger ([Pippenger, 1977]) showed the existence of $(6m,4m,3m,6)$-concentrator for each positive integer $m$ using a probabilistic method. We generalize his approach and prove existence of $(6m,4m,3m,5.05)$-concentrator (which is no longer regular, but has fewer edges). We apply this result to improve the constant of approximation of almost additive set functions by additive set functions from $44.5$ (established in [Kalton, Roberts, 1983]) to $39$. We show a more direct connection of the latter problem to the Whitney type estimate for approximation of continuous functions on a cube in $\mathbb{R}^d$ by linear functions, and improve the estimate of this Whitney constant from $802$ (proved in [Brudnyi, Kalton, 2000]) to $73$.