Bonferroni-Galambos Inequalities for Partition Lattices

Abstract

In this paper, we establish a new analogue of the classical Bonferroni inequalities and their improvements by Galambos for sums of type $\sum_{\pi\in {\Bbb P}(U)} (-1)^{|\pi|-1} (|\pi|-1)! f(\pi)$ where $U$ is a finite set, ${\Bbb P}(U)$ is the partition lattice of $U$ and $f:{\Bbb P}(U)\rightarrow{\Bbb R}$ is some suitable non-negative function. Applications of this new analogue are given to counting connected $k$-uniform hypergraphs, network reliability, and cumulants.