A Colorful Steinitz Lemma with Applications to Block Integer Programs

Abstract

The Steinitz constant in dimension $d$ is the smallest value $c(d)$ such that for any norm on $\mathbb{R}^{ d}$ and for any finite zero-sum sequence in the unit ball, the sequence can be permuted such that the norm of each partial sum is bounded by $c(d)$. Grinberg and Sevastyanov prove that $c(d) \le d$ and that the bound of $d$ is best possible for arbitrary norms; we refer to their result as the Steinitz Lemma. We present a variation of the Steinitz Lemma that permutes multiple sequences at one time. Our result, which we term a colorful Steinitz Lemma, demonstrates upper bounds that are independent of the number of sequences. Many results in the theory of integer programming are proved by permuting vectors of bounded norm; this includes proximity results, Graver basis algorithms, and dynamic programs. Due to a recent paper of Eisenbrand and Weismantel, there has been a surge of research on how the Steinitz Lemma can be used to improve integer programming results. As an application we prove a proximity result for block-structured integer programs.