Failure of Convex-Hull Bounds under Log-Convex Tails

Abstract

Fix $0<r<1$, and let $X_1,X_2,\dots$ be independent symmetric Weibull$(r)$ random variables, that is, \[ \textsf{P}(|X_i|>t)=e^{-t^r},\qquad t\ge 0. \] We prove that there is no constant $C_r$, depending only on $r$, with the following universal property: for every finite set $T\subset \R^N$ there exists a sequence $(y_k)_{k\ge 1}\subset \R^N$ such that \[ T-T\subset conv\{y_k:k\ge 1\}, \qquad \|X_{y_k}\|_{L_{\log(k+2)}}\le C_r\,\bx(T) \quad (k\ge 1), \] where $X_t=\sum_i t_i X_i$ and $\bx(T)=\textsf{E}\sup_{t\in T}X_t$. This gives a negative answer to a question of Latała concerning the validity of convex-hull bounds for canonical Weibull processes. In fact, the failure persists even when the auxiliary vectors appearing in the convex hull are allowed to be arbitrary.