English

Popular matchings with weighted voters

Data Structures and Algorithms 2023-12-14 v2 Discrete Mathematics

Abstract

In the Popular Matching problem, we are given a bipartite graph G=(AB,E)G = (A \cup B, E) and for each vertex vABv\in A\cup B, strict preferences over the neighbors of vv. Given two matchings MM and MM', matching MM is more popular than MM' if the number of vertices preferring MM to MM' is larger than the number of vertices preferring MM' to MM. A matching MM is called popular if there is no matching MM' that is more popular than MM. We consider a natural generalization of Popular Matching where every vertex has a weight. Then, we call a matching MM more popular than matching MM' if the weight of vertices preferring MM to MM' is larger than the weight of vertices preferring MM' to MM. For this case, we show that it is NP-hard to find a popular matching. Our main result its a polynomial-time algorithm that delivers a popular matching or a proof for it non-existence in instances where all vertices on one side have weight c>3c > 3 and all vertices on the other side have weight 1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2110.05901,
  title  = {Popular matchings with weighted voters},
  author = {Klaus Heeger and Ágnes Cseh},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.05901},
  year   = {2023}
}