Log-Concavity and Strong Log-Concavity: a review

Stat Surv. 2014:8:45-114. doi: 10.1214/14-SS107. Epub 2014 Dec 9.

Abstract

We review and formulate results concerning log-concavity and strong-log-concavity in both discrete and continuous settings. We show how preservation of log-concavity and strongly log-concavity on ℝ under convolution follows from a fundamental monotonicity result of Efron (1969). We provide a new proof of Efron's theorem using the recent asymmetric Brascamp-Lieb inequality due to Otto and Menz (2013). Along the way we review connections between log-concavity and other areas of mathematics and statistics, including concentration of measure, log-Sobolev inequalities, convex geometry, MCMC algorithms, Laplace approximations, and machine learning.

Keywords: concave; convex; convolution; inequalities; log-concave; monotone; preservation; strong log-concave.