  Given a sequence of $N$ positive real numbers $\{a_1,a_2,..., a_N \}$, the
number partitioning problem consists of partitioning them into two sets such
that the absolute value of the difference of the sums of $a_j$ over the two
sets is minimized. In the case that the $a_j$'s are statistically independent
random variables uniformly distributed in the unit interval, this NP-complete
problem is equivalent to the problem of finding the ground state of an
infinite-range, random anti-ferromagnetic Ising model. We employ the annealed
approximation to derive analytical lower bounds to the average value of the
difference for the best constrained and unconstrained partitions in the large
$N$ limit. Furthermore, we calculate analytically the fraction of metastable
states, i.e. states that are stable against all single spin flips, and found
that it vanishes like $N^{-3/2}$.
