Each metric graph has canonically associated to it a polarized real torus called its tropical Jacobian. A fundamental real-valued invariant associated to each polarized real torus is its tropical moment. We give an explicit and efficiently computable formula for the tropical moment of a tropical Jacobian in terms of potential theory on the underlying metric graph. We show that there exists a universal linear relation between the tropical moment, a certain capacity called the tau invariant, and the total length of a metric graph. To put our formula in a broader context, we relate our work to the computation of heights attached to principally polarized abelian varieties.

A tight frame is the orthogonal projection of some orthonormal basis of $\mathbb {R}^n$ onto $\mathbb {R}^k.$ We show that a set of vectors is a tight frame if and only if the set of all cross products of these vectors is a tight frame. We reformulate a range of problems on the volume of projections (or sections) of regular polytopes in terms of tight frames and write a first-order necessary condition for local extrema of these problems. As applications, we prove new results for the problem of maximization of the volume of zonotopes.

The zonoid of a d-dimensional random vector is used as a tool for measuring linear dependence among its components. A preorder of linear dependence is defined through inclusion of the zonoids. The zonoid of a random vector does not characterize its distribution, but it does characterize the size-biased distribution of its compositional variables. This fact will allow a characterization of our linear dependence order in terms of a linear-convex order for the size-biased compositional variables. In dimension 2 the linear dependence preorder will be shown to be weaker than the concordance order. Some examples related to the Marshall-Olkin distribution and to a copula model will be presented, and a class of measures of linear dependence will be proposed.