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Volume of slices and sections of the simplex in closed form

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Abstract

Given a vector \(\mathbf {a}\in \mathbb {R}^n\), we provide an alternative and direct proof for the formula of the volume of sections \(\Delta \cap \{\mathbf {x}: \mathbf {a}^T\mathbf {x}<= t\}\) and slices \(\Delta \cap \{\mathbf {x}:\mathbf {a}^T\mathbf {x}= t\}\), \(t\in \mathbb {R}\), of the simplex \(\Delta \). For slices the formula has already been derived but as a by-product of the construction of univariate B-Splines. One goal of the paper is to also show how simple and powerful the Laplace transform technique can be to derive closed form expressions for some multivariate integrals. It also complements some previous results obtained for the hypercube \([0,1]^n\).

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Notes

  1. http://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/1.9781611970067.ch4.

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Acknowledgments

The author declares that there is no conflict of interest. The work of the author has been partially supported by a PGMO grant from the Fondation Mathématique Jacques Hadamard (Paris).

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Correspondence to Jean B. Lasserre.

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Lasserre, J.B. Volume of slices and sections of the simplex in closed form. Optim Lett 9, 1263–1269 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11590-015-0898-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11590-015-0898-z

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