Cut norm and rectangle fourth-moment equivalence ($\Vert f{\Vert }_{\mathrm{cut}}\le \Vert f{\Vert }_{\square }\le (4\Vert f{\Vert }_{\mathrm{cut}}{)}^{1/4}$)

For a real function $f$ bounded by one on a finite Cartesian product, the fourth power of its box norm is the mean of $f(x,y)f(x,y^{\prime })f(x^{\prime },y)f(x^{\prime },y^{\prime })$. Two applications of the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality bound every rectangular discrepancy by the box norm. Conversely, decompose each bounded real test function into positive and negative parts and use the layer cake representation. Its bilinear pairing with $f$ is at most four times the cut norm. Applying this to the row and column tests furnished by fixed $x^{\prime },y^{\prime }$ bounds the fourth moment by four times the cut norm. These dimension-independent estimates make the two notions of small discrepancy equivalent.