Measuring flatness in linear spaces

Let L be a finite-dimensional normed linear space and let M be a compact subset of L lying on one side of a hyperplane through 0. A measure of flatness for M is the number $\text{D(M) =}\text{inf}\text{{}\text{sup}\text{f(x)}\text{f(y)}\text{: x, y ? M}}$, where the infimum is over all f in $\text{L}{}^1$ which are positive on M. Thus D(M) = 1 if M is flat, but otherwise D(M) > 1. On the other hand, let E(M) be a second measure on M defined as follows: If M is linearly independent, E(M) = 1. If M is linearly dependent, then (1) let Z be a minimal, linearly dependent subset of M; (2) partition Z into mutually exclusive subsets U = {u₁, …, u_p} and V = {v₁, …, v_q} such that there exist positive coefficients a_i and b_i for which Σ_{i = 1}^pa_iu_i = Σ_{i = 1}^qb_iv_i; (3) let $\text{r =}\text{max}\text{{}\text{Σ}{}_{\mathrm{i\; =\; 1}}{}^{\mathrm{p}}\text{a}{}_{\mathrm{i}}\text{Σ}{}_{\mathrm{i\; =\; 1}}{}^{\mathrm{q}}\text{b}{}_{\mathrm{i}}\text{,}\text{Σ}{}_{\mathrm{i\; =\; 1}}{}^{\mathrm{p}}\text{b}{}_{\mathrm{i}}\text{Σ}{}_{\mathrm{i\; =\; 1}}{}^{\mathrm{q}}\text{a}{}_{\mathrm{i}}\text{}}$; (4) let E(M) be the supremum of all ratios r which can be formed by steps (1), (2) and (3). The main result of this paper is that these two measures are the same: D(M) = E(M). This result is then used to obtain results concerning the Banach distance-coefficient between an arbitrary finite-dimensional normed linear space and Hilbert space.