Let $B_Y$ denote the unit ball of a normed linear space $Y$. A symmetric, bounded, closed, convex set $A$ in a finite dimensional normed linear space $X$ is called a sufficient enlargement for $X$ if, for an arbitrary isometric embedding of $X$ into a Banach space $Y$, there exists a linear projection $P\colon Y\to X$ such that $P(B_Y)\subset A$. Each finite dimensional normed space has a minimal-volume sufficient enlargement that is a parallelepiped; some spaces have ``exotic'' minimal-volume sufficient enlargements. The main result of the paper is a characterization of spaces having ``exotic'' minimal-volume sufficient enlargements in terms of Auerbach bases.

We study the structure of the sets of symmetric sequences and spreading models of an Orlicz sequence space equipped with partial order with respect to domination of bases. In the cases that these sets are ``small'', some descriptions of the structure of these posets are obtained.

We study the dimension of ``random'' Euclidean sections of direct sums of normed spaces. We compare the obtained results with results from \cite{LMS}, to show that for the direct sums the standard randomness with respect to the Haar measure on Grassmanian coincides with a much ``weaker'' randomness of ``diagonal'' subspaces (Corollary~\ref{sle} and explanation after). We also add some relative information on ``phase transition''.