This volume presents some of the research topics discussed at the 2014-2015 Annual Thematic Program Discrete Structures: Analysis and Applications at the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications during the Spring 2015 where geometric analysis, convex geometry and concentration phenomena were the focus. Leading experts have written surveys of research problems, making state of the art results more conveniently and widely available. The volume is organized into two parts. Part I contains those contributions that focus primarily on problems motivated by probability theory, while Part II contains those contributions that focus primarily on problems motivated by convex geometry and geometric analysis. This book will be of use to those who research convex geometry, geometric analysis and probability directly or apply such methods in other fields.

Convex optimization problems arise frequently in many different fields. This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the subject, and shows in detail how such problems can be solved numerically with great efficiency. The book begins with the basic elements of convex sets and functions, and then describes various classes of convex optimization problems. Duality and approximation techniques are then covered, as are statistical estimation techniques. Various geometrical problems are then presented, and there is detailed discussion of unconstrained and constrained minimization problems, and interior-point methods. The focus of the book is on recognizing convex optimization problems and then finding the most appropriate technique for solving them. It contains many worked examples and homework exercises and will appeal to students, researchers and practitioners in fields such as engineering, computer science, mathematics, statistics, finance and economics.

In recent years, the interaction between harmonic analysis and convex geometry has increased which has resulted in solutions to several long-standing problems. This collection is based on the topics discussed during the Research Semester on Harmonic Analysis and Convexity at the Institute for Computational and Experimental Research in Mathematics in Providence RI in Fall 2022. The volume brings together experts working in related fields to report on the status of major problems in the area including the isomorphic Busemann-Petty and slicing problems for arbitrary measures, extremal problems for Fourier extension and extremal problems for classical singular integrals of martingale type, among others.

The study of high-dimensional convex bodies from a geometric and analytic point of view, with an emphasis on the dependence of various parameters on the dimension stands at the intersection of classical convex geometry and the local theory of Banach spaces. It is also closely linked to many other fields, such as probability theory, partial differential equations, Riemannian geometry, harmonic analysis and combinatorics. It is now understood that the convexity assumption forces most of the volume of a high-dimensional convex body to be concentrated in some canonical way and the main question is whether, under some natural normalization, the answer to many fundamental questions should be independent of the dimension. The aim of this book is to introduce a number of well-known questions regarding the distribution of volume in high-dimensional convex bodies, which are exactly of this nature: among them are the slicing problem, the thin shell conjecture and the Kannan-Lovász-Simonovits conjecture. This book provides a self-contained and up to date account of the progress that has been made in the last fifteen years.

Articles on classical convex geometry, geometric functional analysis, computational geometry, and related areas of harmonic analysis, first published in 1999.