Preservation of log-concavity on summation

This paper is devoted to the study of the log-convexity of combinatorial sequences. We show that the log-convexity is preserved under componentwise sum, under binomial convolution, and by the linear transformations given by the matrices of binomial coefficients and Stirling numbers of two kinds. We develop techniques for dealing with the log-convexity of sequences satisfying a three-term recurrence. We also introduce the concept of $q$-log-convexity and establish the connecti...

This is a survey on recent developments on unimodality, log-concavity and real-rootedness in combinatorics. Stanley and Brenti have written extensive surveys of various techniques that can be used to prove real-rootedness, log-concavity or unimodality. After a brief introduction, we will complement these surveys with a survey over some new techniques that have been developed, as well as problems and conjectures that have been solved. This is a draft of a chapter to appear in ...

Kolmogorov's exponential inequalities are basic tools for studying the strong limit theorems such as the classical laws of the iterated logarithm for both independent and dependent random variables. This paper establishes the Kolmogorov type exponential inequalities of the partial sums of independent random variables as well as negatively dependent random variables under the sub-linear expectations. As applications of the exponential inequalities, the laws of the iterated log...

In this paper, we establish some general forms of the law of the iterated logarithm for independent random variables in a sub-linear expectation space, where the random variables are not necessarily identically distributed. Exponential inequalities for the maximum sum of independent random variables and Kolmogorov's converse exponential inequalities are established as tools for showing the law of the iterated logarithm. As an application, the sufficient and necessary conditio...

Why do natural and interesting sequences often turn out to be log-concave? We give one of many possible explanations, from the viewpoint of "standard conjectures". We illustrate with several examples from combinatorics.

The partition function $p(n)$ and many of its related restricted partition functions have recently been shown independently to satisfy log-concavity: $p(n)^2 \geq p(n-1)p(n+1)$, and satisfy the inequality: $p(n)p(m) \geq p(n+m)$ with only finitely many instances of equality or failure. This paper proves that this is no coincidence, that any log-concave sequence $\{x_n\}$ satisfying a particular initial condition likewise satisfies the inequality $x_nx_m \geq x_{n+m}$. This pa...

We establish strong invariance principles for sums of stationary and ergodic processes with nearly optimal bounds. Applications to linear and some nonlinear processes are discussed. Strong laws of large numbers and laws of the iterated logarithm are also obtained under easily verifiable conditions.

We extend the exponential formula by Bender and Canfield (1996), which relates log-concavity and the cycle index polynomials. The extension clarifies the log-convexity relation. The proof is by noticing the property of a compound Poisson distribution together with its moment generating function. We also give a combinatorial proof of extended "log-convex part" referring Bender and Canfield's approach, where the formula by Bruijn and Erd\"os (1953) is additionally exploited. Th...

We consider log-convex sequences that satisfy an additional constraint imposed on their rate of growth. We call such sequences log-balanced. It is shown that all such sequences satisfy a pair of double inequalities. Sufficient conditions for log-balancedness are given for the case when the sequence satisfies a two- (or more-) term linear recurrence. It is shown that many combinatorially interesting sequences belong to this class, and, as a consequence, that the above-mentione...

The asymptotic tail behaviour of sums of independent subexponential random variables is well understood, one of the main characteristics being the principle of the single big jump. We study the case of dependent subexponential random variables, for both deterministic and random sums, using a fresh approach, by considering conditional independence structures on the random variables. We seek sufficient conditions for the results of the theory with independent random variables s...