The Banach-Mazur distance between two isomorphic finite-dimensional normed spaces
and
is
|
(1)
|
where the infimum is over invertible linear transformations and the norms are operator
norms. For origin-symmetric convex bodies
, the equivalent definition is
|
(2)
|
It measures distortion under linear changes of coordinates (Szarek 1990).
Let
be the supremum of
over these
-dimensional convex bodies.
Friedland (2026) reports the lower bound
|
(3)
|
which, combined with the upper bound of Friedland et al. (2026), would establish . Here
is an absolute constant
and
denotes little-o notation. The new lower
bound depends on a key proposition whose proof Friedland
(2026) states was generated by ChatGPT at the author's request. The claimed sharp
exponent remains qualified pending independent verification of that argument.