Let
(R,m) be a Noetherian local ring of dimension
d>0. Let
I•={In}n∈N be a graded family of
m-primary ideals in
R . We examine how far off from a polynomial can the length function
ℓR(R/In) be asymptotically. More specifically, we show that there exists a constant
γ>0 such that for all
n≥0,