Tarski's Plank Problem - Statement

Statement

Given a convex body C in Rn and a hyperplane H, the width of C parallel to H, w(C,H), is the distance between the two supporting hyperplanes of C that are parallel to H. The smallest such distance (i.e. the infimum over all possible hyperplanes) is called the minimal width of C, w(C).

The (closed) set of points P between two distinct, parallel hyperplanes in Rn is called a plank, and the distance between the two hyperplanes is called the width of the plank, w(P). Tarski conjectured that if a convex body C of minimal width w(C) was covered by a collection of planks, then the sum of the widths of those planks must be at least w(C). That is, if P1,…,Pm are planks such that

then

Bang proved this is indeed the case.

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