Logarithmic Approximations for Fair k-Set Selection
Logarithmic Approximations for Fair k-Set Selection
Shi Li, Chenyang Xu, Ruilong Zhang
Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Main Track. Pages 3943-3951.
https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/439
We study the fair k-set selection problem where we aim to select k sets from a given set system such that the (weighted) occurrence times that each element appears in these k selected sets are balanced, i.e., the maximum (weighted) occurrence times are minimized. By observing that a set system can be formulated into a bipartite graph G:=(L cup R, E), our problem is equivalent to selecting k vertices from R such that the maximum (weighted) number selected neighbors of vertices in L is minimized. The problem arises in a wide range of applications in various fields, such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, and operations research.
We first prove that the problem is NP-hard even if the maximum degree Delta of the input bipartite graph is 3, and the problem is in P when Delta=2. We then show that the problem is also in P when the input set system forms a laminar family. Based on intuitive linear programming, we show that two rounding algorithms achieve O(log n/(log log n))-approximation on general bipartite graphs, and an independent rounding algorithm achieves O(log(Delta))-approximation on bipartite graphs with a maximum degree Delta. We demonstrate that our analysis is almost tight by providing a hard instance for this linear programming.
Keywords:
Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: GTEP: Computational social choice
Agent-based and Multi-agent Systems: MAS: Resource allocation
Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: CSO: Mixed discrete and continuous optimization
Game Theory and Economic Paradigms: GTEP: Fair division
