The continuous window–variance conjecture for posets

From papers

Let PP be a finite poset, let FF be uniformly distributed in its order polytope, let H(x)=EF(x)H(x)=\mathbb E F(x), and let Win(x)=E[R(x)Q(x)]\operatorname{Win}(x)=\mathbb E[R(x)-Q(x)], where Q(x)=maxy<xF(y)Q(x)=\max_{y<x}F(y) and R(x)=miny>xF(y)R(x)=\min_{y>x}F(y) with endpoint conventions Q(x)=0Q(x)=0 and R(x)=1R(x)=1. The window–variance conjecture. For every PP and xPx\in P,

Var(F(x))Win(x)H(x)(1H(x))2+Win(x).\operatorname{Var}(F(x))\leq \frac{\operatorname{Win}(x)H(x)(1-H(x))}{2+\operatorname{Win}(x)}.

The proposed bound is tight in a stated incomparability case and is known for series-parallel posets, but remains open in general.

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Sources & referencesView supporting material

Primary source

Max Aires and Jeff Kahn, “Balancing Extensions in Posets of Large Width”, arXiv:2509.11549 (2025).

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