Minimum Number of Affine Simplexes of Given Dimension

In this paper we formulate and solve extremal problems in the d-dimensional Euclidean space and further in hypergraphs, originating from problems in stoichiometry and elementary linear algebra. The notion of affine simplex is the bridge between the original problems and the presented extremal theorem on set systems. A function related to Sperners theorem and the YBLM inequality is also considered and its relation to hypergraph Turan problems is discussed.