Entropy and set cardinality inequalities for partition-determined functions

A new notion of partition-determined functions is introduced, and several basic inequalities are developed for the entropy of such functions of independent random variables, as well as for cardinalities of compound sets obtained using these functions. Here a compound set means a set obtained by varying each argument of a function of several variables over a set associated with that argument, where all the sets are subsets of an appropriate algebraic structure so that the function is well defined. On the one hand, the entropy inequalities developed for partition-determined functions imply entropic analogues of general inequalities of Pl\"unnecke-Ruzsa type. On the other hand, the cardinality inequalities developed for compound sets imply several inequalities for sumsets, including for instance a generalization of inequalities proved by Gyarmati, Matolcsi and Ruzsa (2010). We also provide partial progress towards a conjecture of Ruzsa (2007) for sumsets in nonabelian groups. All proofs are elementary and rely on properly developing certain information-theoretic inequalities.Comment: 26 pages. v2: Revised version incorporating referee feedback plus inclusion of some additional corollaries and discussion. v3: Final version with minor corrections. To appear in Random Structures and Algorithm

Directional complexity and entropy for lift mappings

We introduce and study the notion of a directional complexity and entropy for maps of degree 1 on the circle. For piecewise affine Markov maps we use symbolic dynamics to relate this complexity to the symbolic complexity. We apply a combinatorial machinery to obtain exact formulas for the directional entropy, to find the maximal directional entropy, and to show that it equals the topological entropy of the map. Keywords: Rotation interval, Space-time window, Directional complexity, Directional entropy;Comment: 19p. 3 fig, Discrete and Continuous Dynamical Systems-B (Vol. 20, No. 10) December 201

The law of series

We prove a general ergodic-theoretic result concerning the return time statistic, which, properly understood, sheds some new light on the common sense phenomenon known as {\it the law of series}. Let \proc be an ergodic process on finitely many states, with positive entropy. We show that the distribution function of the normalized waiting time for the first visit to a small cylinder set $B$ is, for majority of such cylinders and up to epsilon, dominated by the exponential distribution function $1-e^{-t}$. This fact has the following interpretation: The occurrences of such a "rare event" $B$ can deviate from purely random in only one direction -- so that for any length of an "observation period" of time, the first occurrence of $B$ "attracts" its further repetitions in this period