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Abstract

We define a handy new modulus for normed spaces. More precisely, given any normed space X, we define in a canonical way a function ξ:[0,1)→ ℝ which depends only on the two-dimensional subspaces of X. We show that this function is strictly increasing and convex, and that its behaviour is intimately connected with the geometry of X. In particular, ξ tells us whether or not X is uniformly smooth, uniformly convex, uniformly non-square or an inner product space.