Search arXiv⌕ Search
Home/Archive/arXiv

arXiv · 1906.09050

Fairness and Utilization in Allocating Resources with Uncertain Demand

Kate Donahue·Jon Kleinberg
View original source ↗Read source document ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Resource allocation problems are a fundamental domain in which to evaluate the fairness properties of algorithms. The trade-offs between fairness and utilization have a long history in this domain. A recent line of work has considered fairness questions for resource allocation when the demands for the resource are distributed across multiple groups and drawn from probability distributions. In such cases, a natural fairness requirement is that individuals from different groups should have (approximately) equal probabilities of receiving the resource. A largely open question in this area has been to bound the gap between the maximum possible utilization of the resource and the maximum possible utilization subject to this fairness condition. Here, we obtain some of the first provable upper bounds on this gap. We obtain an upper bound for arbitrary distributions, as well as much stronger upper bounds for specific families of distributions that are typically used to model levels of demand. In particular, we find - somewhat surprisingly - that there are natural families of distributions (including Exponential and Weibull) for which the gap is non-existent: it is possible to simultaneously achieve maximum utilization and the given notion of fairness. Finally, we show that for power-law distributions, there is a non-trivial gap between the solutions, but this gap can be bounded by a constant factor independent of the parameters of the distribution.

Explore related subjects

cs.DScs.CYcs.GT

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Kate Donahue, Jon Kleinberg. 2019-12-05. Fairness and Utilization in Allocating Resources with Uncertain Demand. https://doi.org/10.1145/3351095.3372847

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

arXiv2026

Independent Set Reconfiguration via Dilworth Decompositions

The Token Jumping and Sliding Token problems are fundamental reconfiguration problems defined on the independent sets of an undirected graph. Given two independent sets $I$ and $J$, each of size $k$, these problems ask whether there exists a sequence of elementary operations transforming $I$ into $J$ such that every intermediate configuration is also an independent set of size $k$. Suppose a token is placed on each vertex of $I$: in Sliding Token, an operation moves a token from a vertex $u \in I$ to an adjacent vertex $v \notin I$; in Token Jumping, the token may instead move to any vertex $v \notin I$. While both problems are $\mathsf{PSPACE}$-complete on general graphs, polynomial-time algorithms for one or both variants have been developed for several graph classes, including trees, block graphs, bipartite permutation graphs, cographs, $P_4$-tidy graphs, and interval graphs. In this paper, we prove that both problems are solvable in polynomial time on threshold signed graphs, also known as Dilworth-2 graphs. A graph $G=(V,E)$ is a threshold signed graph if there exist a mapping $a:V\to\mathbb{R}$ and positive real constants $S,T>0$ such that $|a(v)|< \min\{S,T\}$ for all $v \in V$, and for any distinct vertices $u,v\in V$, $\{u,v\}\in E$ if and only if $|a(u)+a(v)|\ge S$ or $|a(u)-a(v)|\ge T$. More generally, we also show that Token Jumping can be solved in time $n^{O(\mathcal{D}(G))}$, where $\mathcal{D}(G)$ denotes the Dilworth number of $G$. Thus, Token Jumping belongs to $\mathsf{XP}$ when parameterised by the Dilworth number. This graph class is a subclass of permutation graphs, for which the complexity of these problems remains open, and is incomparable with the class of bipartite permutation graphs studied by Fox-Epstein et al. (ISAAC, 2015).

cs.DS↗
arXiv2026

Matrix Spencer: Eight Standard Deviations Suffice and an Almost-Linear Time Algorithm for Dense Input

The Matrix Spencer conjecture asserts that for all symmetric matrices $A_1,\ldots,A_n\in\mathbb{R}^{n\times n}$ with $\|A_i\|\le1$ there are signs $\varepsilon_1,\ldots,\varepsilon_n\in\{-1,1\}$ with $\|\sum_{i=1}^n\varepsilon_iA_i\|=O(\sqrt n)$. We prove it: a signing of discrepancy below $8\sqrt n$ always exists. We also give a randomized algorithm that finds a signing of discrepancy below $12\sqrt n$ with failure probability at most $p$. The algorithm uses $n^{3+o(1)}\operatorname{polylog}(1/p)$ arithmetic operations in the real-arithmetic model. This matches the size $n^3$ of the dense input up to subpolynomial factors. In the other direction, we prove that for every $n$ there are collections of symmetric matrices such that every signing has discrepancy at least $(2-o(1))\sqrt{n}$. We present three different proofs of the matrix Spencer conjecture. The key to every proof is a hereditary small-ball estimate. This is a lower bound on the Gaussian measure of the spectral body $\{x\in \mathbb{R}^n:\|\sum_ix_iA_i\|\le R\}$ that holds for every subfamily of the matrices. The other ingredient turns that Gaussian measure into a partial signing. We give three approaches to obtain such a signing. The first one covers the cube by partially signed faces through Gaussian concentration with a constant $7\cdot10^9$. The second proof replaces the covering by a projection lemma with explicit parameters for a constant $156000$. The third proof turns Gaussian measure into signs by a lossless coding, with no union bound. It proves the estimate at the right radius with smooth spectral barriers and certified coefficients. It gives a constant below $7.88$. For algorithms, the main idea is to project Gaussian points onto a smoothed spectral body. The $n^{3+o(1)}$ time algorithm tracks the Gibbs matrix of that body across coordinate-descent steps with sketched increments and random refreshes.

cs.DS↗
arXiv2026

On Deterministically Computing Total Variation Distance via Zonotope Compression

We study deterministic relative approximation of the total variation distance between high-dimensional distributions given by succinct descriptions. We develop an abstract deterministic approximation framework based on representing the total variation distance as a support function of a low-dimensional zonotope. As applications, we obtain FPTASs for several models. Given two mixtures of product distributions over $[q]^n$ with a total of $K$ component distributions, our algorithm approximates their TV-distance within a factor of $1+\varepsilon$ in time $\widetilde O_K(nq(n/\varepsilon)^{2K})$. We also give an FPTAS for mixtures of $n$-step Markov chains over $[q]^n$ with a total of $K$ component distributions, with running time $\widetilde O_K(nq^2(n/\varepsilon)^{2K})$. Finally, for two latent-tree Ising models with the same underlying tree topology, we give an FPTAS for the TV-distance between their leaf marginals in time $O(|V|^{13}\varepsilon^{-12})$.

cs.DS↗