Balancing vectors and Gaussian measures of n-dimensional convex bodies

Let ‖·‖ be the Euclidean norm on R ⁿ and γ_n the (standard) Gaussian measure on R ⁿ with density (2π)^−n/2e. It is proved that there is a numerical constant c>0 with the following property: if K is an arbitrary convex body in R ⁿ with γ_n(K)≥1/2, then to each sequence u₁,…,u_m∈ R ⁿ with ‖u₁‖,…,‖u_m‖≤c there correspond signs ε₁,…,ε_m=±1 such that ∑^m_i=1ε_iu_i∈K. This improves the well-known result obtained by Spencer [Trans. Amer. Math. Soc. 289 , 679–705 (1985)] for the n-dimensional cube. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Random Struct. Alg., 12: 351–360, 1998