Generalized Information Inequalities via Submodularity, and Two Combinatorial Problems

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Jakhar, Gunank, Kurri, Gowtham R., Chillara, Suryajith, Prabhakaran, Vinod M.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2026
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author Jakhar, Gunank
Kurri, Gowtham R.
Chillara, Suryajith
Prabhakaran, Vinod M.
author_facet Jakhar, Gunank
Kurri, Gowtham R.
Chillara, Suryajith
Prabhakaran, Vinod M.
contents It is well known that there is a strong connection between entropy inequalities and submodularity, since the entropy of a collection of random variables is a submodular function. Unifying frameworks for information inequalities arising from submodularity were developed by Madiman and Tetali (2010) and Sason (2022). Madiman and Tetali (2010) established strong and weak fractional inequalities that subsume classical results such as Han's inequality and Shearer's lemma. Sason (2022) introduced a convex-functional framework for generalizing Han's inequality, and derived unified inequalities for submodular and supermodular functions. In this work, we build on these frameworks and make three contributions. First, we establish convex-functional generalizations of the strong and weak Madiman and Tetali inequalities for submodular functions. Second, using a special case of the strong Madiman-Tetali inequality, we derive a new Loomis-Whitney-type projection inequality for finite point sets in $\mathbb{R}^d$, which improves upon the classical Loomis-Whitney bound by incorporating slice-level structural information. Finally, we study an extremal graph theory problem that recovers and extends the previously known results of Sason (2022) and Boucheron et al., employing Shearer's lemma in contrast to the use of Han's inequality in those works.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2601_15723
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
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spellingShingle Generalized Information Inequalities via Submodularity, and Two Combinatorial Problems
Jakhar, Gunank
Kurri, Gowtham R.
Chillara, Suryajith
Prabhakaran, Vinod M.
Information Theory
Combinatorics
It is well known that there is a strong connection between entropy inequalities and submodularity, since the entropy of a collection of random variables is a submodular function. Unifying frameworks for information inequalities arising from submodularity were developed by Madiman and Tetali (2010) and Sason (2022). Madiman and Tetali (2010) established strong and weak fractional inequalities that subsume classical results such as Han's inequality and Shearer's lemma. Sason (2022) introduced a convex-functional framework for generalizing Han's inequality, and derived unified inequalities for submodular and supermodular functions. In this work, we build on these frameworks and make three contributions. First, we establish convex-functional generalizations of the strong and weak Madiman and Tetali inequalities for submodular functions. Second, using a special case of the strong Madiman-Tetali inequality, we derive a new Loomis-Whitney-type projection inequality for finite point sets in $\mathbb{R}^d$, which improves upon the classical Loomis-Whitney bound by incorporating slice-level structural information. Finally, we study an extremal graph theory problem that recovers and extends the previously known results of Sason (2022) and Boucheron et al., employing Shearer's lemma in contrast to the use of Han's inequality in those works.
title Generalized Information Inequalities via Submodularity, and Two Combinatorial Problems
topic Information Theory
Combinatorics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.15723