Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

We improve the lower bound for the L_\infty norm of the discrepancy function. This result makes a partial step towards resolving the Discrepancy Conjecture. Being a theorem in the theory of irregularities of distributions, it also relates to corresponding results in approximation theory (namely, the Kolmogorov entropy of spaces of functions with bounded mixed derivatives) and in probability theory (namely, Small Ball Inequality - small deviation inequality for the Brownian sheet). We also provide sharp bounds for the exponential Orlicz norm and the BMO norm of the discrepancy function in two dimensions. In the second part of the thesis we prove that any sufficiently smooth one-dimensional Calderon-Zygmund convolution operator can be recovered through averaging of Haar shift operators. This allows to generalize the estimates, which had been previously known for Haar shift operators, to Calderon-Zygmund operators. As a result, the A_2 conjecture is settled for this particular type of Calederon-Zygmund operators.