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The U.S. Supreme Court is currently deliberating over whether a proposed mathematical formula should be used to detect unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering. We show that in some cases, this formula will only flag bizarrely shaped…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2017-10-27 Boris Alexeev , Dustin G. Mixon

Ensuring fairness in machine learning algorithms is a challenging and essential task. We consider the problem of clustering a set of points while satisfying fairness constraints. While there have been several attempts to capture group…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-07 Debajyoti Kar , Mert Kosan , Debmalya Mandal , Sourav Medya , Arlei Silva , Palash Dey , Swagato Sanyal

Researchers and legislators alike continue the search for methods of drawing fair districting plans. A districting plan is a partition of a state's subdivisions (e.g. counties, voting precincts, etc.). By modeling these districting plans as…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2023-03-13 Jared Grove , Suely Oliveira , Anthony Pizzimenti , David E. Stewart

We present a new game, Dots & Polygons, played on a planar point set. Players take turns connecting two points, and when a player closes a (simple) polygon, the player scores its area. We show that deciding whether the game can be won from…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2020-05-27 Kevin Buchin , Mart Hagedoorn , Irina Kostitsyna , Max van Mulken , Jolan Rensen , Leo van Schooten

We examine the extent of gerrymandering for the 2010 General Assembly district map of Wisconsin. We find that there is substantial variability in the election outcome depending on what maps are used. We also found robust evidence that the…

Applications · Statistics 2017-09-07 Gregory Herschlag , Robert Ravier , Jonathan C. Mattingly

Recommender system has intrinsic problems such as sparsity and fairness. Although it has been widely adopted for the past decades, research on fairness of recommendation algorithms has been largely neglected until recently. One important…

Information Retrieval · Computer Science 2022-04-29 Hao Wang

Many approximation algorithms and heuristic algorithms to find a fair clustering have emerged. In this paper we define a new and natural variant of fair clustering problem and design a polynomial time algorithm to compute an optimal fair…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2025-11-12 Ayano Moritaka , Shin-ichi Nakano , Kento Tanaka , Noriaki Yoshida

A $k$-coloring of a graph is an assignment of integers between $1$ and $k$ to vertices in the graph such that the endpoints of each edge receive different numbers. We study a local variation of the coloring problem, which imposes further…

Combinatorics · Mathematics 2018-09-24 Jie You , Yixin Cao , Jianxin Wang

Clustering is a well-studied unsupervised learning task that aims to partition data points into a number of clusters. In many applications, these clusters correspond to real-world constructs (e.g., electoral districts, playlists, TV…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2025-09-25 Connor Lawless , Oktay Gunluk

Algorithmic and statistical approaches to congressional redistricting are becoming increasingly valuable tools in courts and redistricting commissions for quantifying gerrymandering in the United States. While there is existing literature…

Computers and Society · Computer Science 2021-11-18 Gilvir Gill

To make a joint decision, agents (or voters) are often required to provide their preferences as linear orders. To determine a winner, the given linear orders can be aggregated according to a voting protocol. However, in realistic settings,…

Computational Complexity · Computer Science 2010-05-03 Nadja Betzler , Britta Dorn

While manipulative attacks on elections have been well-studied, only recently has attention turned to attacks that account for geographic information, which are extremely common in the real world. The most well known in the media is…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-03-17 Zack Fitzsimmons , Omer Lev

As a case study into an algorithmic approach to congressional districting, North Carolina provides a lot to explore. Statistical modeling has called into question whether recent North Carolina district plans are unbiased. In particular, the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-11-21 Jimmy Risk , Jennifer Switkes , Ann Zhang

We study fairness in house allocation, where $m$ houses are to be allocated among $n$ agents so that every agent receives one house. We show that maximizing the number of envy-free agents is hard to approximate to within a factor of…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2021-07-15 Naoyuki Kamiyama , Pasin Manurangsi , Warut Suksompong

As machine learning has become more prevalent, researchers have begun to recognize the necessity of ensuring machine learning systems are fair. Recently, there has been an interest in defining a notion of fairness that mitigates…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-06-22 Sara Ahmadian , Alessandro Epasto , Marina Knittel , Ravi Kumar , Mohammad Mahdian , Benjamin Moseley , Philip Pham , Sergei Vassilvitskii , Yuyan Wang

Motivated by the problem of redistricting, we study area-preserving reconfigurations of connected subdivisions of a simple polygon. A connected subdivision of a polygon $\mathcal{R}$, called a district map, is a set of interior disjoint…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2023-07-04 Hugo A. Akitaya , Andrei Gonczi , Diane L. Souvaine , Csaba D. Tóth , Thomas Weighill

Clustering is an unsupervised learning task that aims to partition data into a set of clusters. In many applications, these clusters correspond to real-world constructs (e.g. electoral districts) whose benefit can only be attained by groups…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-02-09 Connor Lawless , Oktay Gunluk

When selecting locations for a set of facilities, standard clustering algorithms may place unfair burden on some individuals and neighborhoods. We formulate a fairness concept that takes local population densities into account. In…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-09-02 Christopher Jung , Sampath Kannan , Neil Lutz

We introduce and study the problem of balanced districting, where given an undirected graph with vertices carrying two types of weights (different population, resource types, etc) the goal is to maximize the total weights covered in vertex…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2025-06-03 Prathamesh Dharangutte , Jie Gao , Shang-En Huang , Fang-Yi Yu

In the United States, regions are frequently divided into districts for the purpose of electing representatives. How the districts are drawn can affect who's elected, and drawing districts to give an advantage to a certain group is known as…

Discrete Mathematics · Computer Science 2023-12-21 Sarah Cannon