English

Greedy Matching in Optimal Transport with concave cost

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2025-08-28 v2 Optimization and Control Probability

Abstract

We consider the optimal transport problem between a set of nn red points and a set of nn blue points subject to a concave cost function such as c(x,y)=xypc(x,y) = \|x-y\|^{p} for 0<p<10< p < 1. Our focus is on a particularly simple matching algorithm: match the closest red and blue point, remove them both and repeat. We prove that it provides good results in any metric space (X,d)(X,d) when the cost function is c(x,y)=d(x,y)pc(x,y) = d(x,y)^{p} with 0<p<1/20 < p < 1/2. Empirically, the algorithm produces results that are remarkably close to optimal -- especially as the cost function gets more concave; this suggests that greedy matching may be a good toy model for Optimal Transport for very concave transport cost.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2307.03140,
  title  = {Greedy Matching in Optimal Transport with concave cost},
  author = {Andrea Ottolini and Stefan Steinerberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2307.03140},
  year   = {2025}
}