English

Resilience for the Littlewood-Offord Problem

Combinatorics 2017-08-04 v4 Probability

Abstract

Consider the sum X(ξ)=i=1naiξiX(\xi)=\sum_{i=1}^n a_i\xi_i, where a=(ai)i=1na=(a_i)_{i=1}^n is a sequence of non-zero reals and ξ=(ξi)i=1n\xi=(\xi_i)_{i=1}^n is a sequence of i.i.d. Rademacher random variables (that is, Pr[ξi=1]=Pr[ξi=1]=1/2\Pr[\xi_i=1]=\Pr[\xi_i=-1]=1/2). The classical Littlewood-Offord problem asks for the best possible upper bound on the concentration probabilities Pr[X=x]\Pr[X=x]. In this paper we study a resilience version of the Littlewood-Offord problem: how many of the ξi\xi_i is an adversary typically allowed to change without being able to force concentration on a particular value? We solve this problem asymptotically, and present a few interesting open problems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1609.08136,
  title  = {Resilience for the Littlewood-Offord Problem},
  author = {Afonso S. Bandeira and Asaf Ferber and Matthew Kwan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.08136},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

This version addresses referee's comments

R2 v1 2026-06-22T16:01:57.400Z