Same average in every direction

Imre Bárány, Gábor Domokos

Published 2023-10-29Version 1

Given a polytope $P\subset R^3$ and a non-zero vector $z \in R^3$, the plane $\{x\in R^3:zx=t\}$ intersects $P$ in convex polygon $P(z,t)$ for $t \in [t^-,t^+]$ where $t^-=\min \{zx: x \in P\}$ and $t^+=\max \{xz: x\in P\}$, $zx$ is the scalar product of $z,x \in R^3$. Let $A(P,z)$ denote the average number of vertices of $P(z,t)$ on the interval $[t^-,t^+]$. For what polytopes is $A(P,z)$ a constant independent of $z$?