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Dimension reduction by random hyperplane tessellations

Given a subset K of the unit Euclidean sphere, we estimate the minimal number m = m(K) of hyperplanes that generate a uniform tessellation of K, in the sense that the fraction of the hyperplanes separating any pair x, y in K is nearly proportional to the Euclidean distance between x and y. Random hyperplanes prove to be almost ideal for this problem; they achieve the almost optimal bound m = O(w(K)^2) where w(K) is the Gaussian mean width of K. Using the map that sends x in K to the sign vector with respect to the hyperplanes, we conclude that every bounded subset K of R^n embeds into the Hamming cube {-1, 1}^m with a small distortion in the Gromov-Haussdorf metric. Since for many sets K one has m = m(K) << n, this yields a new discrete mechanism of dimension reduction for sets in Euclidean spaces.