Stability Constants in Linear Spaces

We investigate the stability constants of convex sets in linear spaces. We prove that the stability constants of affinity and of the Jensen equation are of the same order of magnitude for every convex set in arbitrary linear spaces, even for functions mapping into an arbitrary Banach space. We also show that the second Whitney constant corresponding to the bounded functions equals half of the stability constant of the Jensen equation whenever the latter is finite. We show that if a convex set contains arbitrarily long segments in every direction, then its Jensen and Whitney constants are uniformly bounded. We prove a result that reduces the investigation of the stability constants to the case when the underlying set is the unit ball of a Banach space. As an application we prove that if D is convex and every delta-Jensen function on D differs from a Jensen function by a bounded function, then the stability constants of D are finite.