On metric Ramsey-type phenomena

The main question studied in this article may be viewed as a nonlinear analogue of Dvoretzky's theorem in Banach space theory or as part of Ramsey theory in combinatorics. Given a finite metric space on n points, we seek its subspace of largest cardinality which can be embedded with a given distortion in Hilbert space. We provide nearly tight upper and lower bounds on the cardinality of this subspace in terms of n and the desired distortion. Our main theorem states that for any epsilon>0, every n point metric space contains a subset of size at least n^{1-\epsilon} which is embeddable in Hilbert space with O(\frac{\log(1/\epsilon)}{\epsilon}) distortion. The bound on the distortion is tight up to the log(1/\epsilon) factor. We further include a comprehensive study of various other aspects of this problem.Comment: 67 pages, published versio

Ramsey expansions of metrically homogeneous graphs

We discuss the Ramsey property, the existence of a stationary independence relation and the coherent extension property for partial isometries (coherent EPPA) for all classes of metrically homogeneous graphs from Cherlin's catalogue, which is conjectured to include all such structures. We show that, with the exception of tree-like graphs, all metric spaces in the catalogue have precompact Ramsey expansions (or lifts) with the expansion property. With two exceptions we can also characterise the existence of a stationary independence relation and the coherent EPPA. Our results can be seen as a new contribution to Ne\v{s}et\v{r}il's classification programme of Ramsey classes and as empirical evidence of the recent convergence in techniques employed to establish the Ramsey property, the expansion (or lift or ordering) property, EPPA and the existence of a stationary independence relation. At the heart of our proof is a canonical way of completing edge-labelled graphs to metric spaces in Cherlin's classes. The existence of such a "completion algorithm" then allows us to apply several strong results in the areas that imply EPPA and respectively the Ramsey property. The main results have numerous corollaries on the automorphism groups of the Fra\"iss\'e limits of the classes, such as amenability, unique ergodicity, existence of universal minimal flows, ample generics, small index property, 21-Bergman property and Serre's property (FA).Comment: 57 pages, 14 figures. Extends results of arXiv:1706.00295. Minor revisio

Ramsey-type theorems for metric spaces with applications to online problems

A nearly logarithmic lower bound on the randomized competitive ratio for the metrical task systems problem is presented. This implies a similar lower bound for the extensively studied k-server problem. The proof is based on Ramsey-type theorems for metric spaces, that state that every metric space contains a large subspace which is approximately a hierarchically well-separated tree (and in particular an ultrametric). These Ramsey-type theorems may be of independent interest.Comment: Fix an error in the metadata. 31 pages, 0 figures. Preliminary version in FOCS '01. To be published in J. Comput. System Sc

Fraisse Limits, Ramsey Theory, and Topological Dynamics of Automorphism Groups

We study in this paper some connections between the Fraisse theory of amalgamation classes and ultrahomogeneous structures, Ramsey theory, and topological dynamics of automorphism groups of countable structures.Comment: 73 pages, LaTeX 2e, to appear in Geom. Funct. Ana

On Metric Ramsey-type Dichotomies

The classical Ramsey theorem, states that every graph contains either a large clique or a large independent set. Here we investigate similar dichotomic phenomena in the context of finite metric spaces. Namely, we prove statements of the form "Every finite metric space contains a large subspace that is nearly quilateral or far from being equilateral". We consider two distinct interpretations for being "far from equilateral". Proximity among metric spaces is quantified through the metric distortion D. We provide tight asymptotic answers for these problems. In particular, we show that a phase transition occurs at D=2.Comment: 14 pages, 0 figure