For and nonempty , let
The Talagrand convex distance is
Equivalently,
For completeness, let be a closest point of the finite convex hull to zero. If , minimality gives for every . Taking proves that the supremum is at least . Conversely each permitted has by Cauchy-Schwarz. The weights are nonnegative because the hull has nonnegative coordinates. If , both sides are zero. This proves the dual definition used below.
We prove Talagrand's convex distance inequality by induction on the number of factors. Write , with measure , and . For a last-coordinate value , let . Choose a section of largest probability , and put . The total event probability is .
If has positive probability, combine mismatch vectors from and from . A weight on the second section contributes at most in the last coordinate. Convexity of the squared Euclidean norm gives, for every ,
The last-coordinate contribution is actually zero if , so the displayed upper bound remains valid. Hölder's inequality and the induction hypothesis yield
For a zero-probability section use directly, so no division by zero or exponent of an infinite quantity is needed.
The scalar estimate for Talagrand product induction is
Here is its proof. For set . If , take ; the logarithm of the left expression is . Put . Then and
since for . Thus . If , choose . The already proved boundary case gives . The same direct choice covers .
Average the resulting section bounds over :
where the last inequality is equivalent to . The induction starts on the zero-coordinate singleton, where every positive-probability event is the whole space and the moment is one. Hence
We assume ; a zero-probability event has no finite right-hand bound to prove. Markov's inequality also gives
For the subsequence application, let be the longest increasing subsequence length for independent sequence coordinates. A witness of length uses only positions. If and satisfies , at least witness positions must change: all unchanged witness positions remain in increasing order. Put weights on the witness and zero elsewhere. The dual distance definition gives
where the latter expression increases with for . Therefore the increasing-subsequence certificate concentration bound is
If the lower event has probability zero the conclusion is immediate.
Let be an integer median, so . Taking the two thresholds in the bound gives, for ,
For the lower event is empty. In a nonempty sequence . Integration of these tails gives an explicit mean-median estimate: use for and for , obtaining
Writing , the median property also gives . Consequently, for a universal constant , all satisfy
Thus the subsequence length is concentrated near its mean on the scale , rather than the generic coordinate-exposure scale . This argument applies directly to finite-valued independent sequences. Independent continuous samples follow by refining finite coordinate discretizations; the strict-order pattern stabilizes almost surely when ties have probability zero. A uniform random permutation is the rank sequence of independent continuous samples, so it has the same subsequence-length concentration. Arbitrarily dependent random sequences are not covered by the product-space assumption.