While analyzing convergence speed of stochastic-gradient methods for convex optimization problems, Recht et al (2011) posed a tantalizing conjecture. It seems quite tricky, so after having struggled a bit with it, I decided to bring it to the attention of the MO community.
Among other questions, Recht and Re (RR) [1] pose the following Arithmetic-Mean, Geometric-Mean conjecture concerning symmetrized products:
RR. Let $A_1,\ldots,A_n$ be symmetric positive definite matrices. Let $\pi \in \mathfrak{S}_n$, where $\mathfrak{S}_n$ denotes the symmetric group. Let $P_{\pi} := \prod_{i=1}^n A_{\pi(i)}$. Then, $$\begin{equation*} \left\|\frac{1}{n!}\sum_{\pi \in \mathfrak{S}_n} P_{\pi}\right\| \le \left\|\left(\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^n A_i\right)^n\right\|, \end{equation*}$$ where $\|\cdot\|$ denotes the spectral norm.
Playing around a bit, it seems that in fact, the following much stronger conjecture should be true, but as of now, I don't know how to prove it---so I'm putting it out here. Hopefully, someone will be able to suggest to me potential areas of math where I could go to further educate myself about related inequalities.
(S., 2011). Let $\sigma(\cdot)$ denote the singular value map, i.e., the map that associates to a matrix the vector of its singular values (arranged in decreasing order). And let $\prec_w$ denote weak majorization. Then, $$\begin{equation*} \sigma^{1/n}\left(\frac{1}{n!}\sum_{\pi \in \mathfrak{S}_n} P_{\pi}\right) \prec_w \sigma\left(\frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=1}^n A_i\right). \end{equation*}$$
Notes.
(a) The two matrix version of the my conjecture follows immediately from a stronger conjecture of Bhatia and Kittaneh that was actually recently resolved in Ref. [2].
(b) It seems that for random matrices, Recht and Re proved their conjecture (because everything just disentangles easily); see cited paper for details.
REFERENCES
[1]. B. Recht and C. Re (2012). Beneath the valley of the noncommutative arithmetic-geometric mean inequality: conjectures, case-studies, and consequences.
[2]. S. W. Drury, On a question of Bhatia and Kittaneh, Linear Algebra and its Applications, 437 (2012) pp. 1955--1960.