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Related papers: How Similar Are Two Elections?

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When two different parties use the same learning rule on their own data, how can we test whether the distributions of the two outcomes are similar? In this paper, we study the similarity of outcomes of learning rules through the lens of the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-05-24 Alkis Kalavasis , Amin Karbasi , Shay Moran , Grigoris Velegkas

Computing the similarity between two probability distributions is a recurring theme across control. We introduce a unified family of distances between the probability distributions of two random variables that is based on the discrepancy…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-10-03 Alexandros E. Tzikas , Arec Jamgochian , Nazim Kemal Ure , Mykel J. Kochenderfer , Stephen P. Boyd

We consider machine learning in a comparison-based setting where we are given a set of points in a metric space, but we have no access to the actual distances between the points. Instead, we can only ask an oracle whether the distance…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2017-04-06 Siavash Haghiri , Debarghya Ghoshdastidar , Ulrike von Luxburg

Determining whether two graphs are structurally identical is a fundamental problem with applications spanning mathematics, computer science, chemistry, and network science. Despite decades of study, graph isomorphism remains a challenging…

Computational Physics · Physics 2026-04-10 Sara Najem , Amer E. Mouawad

Metric distortion in social choice is a framework for evaluating how well voting rules minimize social cost when both voters and candidates exist in a shared metric space, with a voter's cost defined by their distance to a candidate. Voters…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-02-14 Mohak Goyal , Sahasrajit Sarmasarkar

Election rules are formal processes that aggregate voters preferences, typically to select a single candidate, called the winner. Most of the election rules studied in the literature require the voters to rank the candidates from the most…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2019-01-31 Matthias Bentert , Piotr Skowron

The Earth Mover's Distance (EMD) is a state-of-the art metric for comparing discrete probability distributions, but its high distinguishability comes at a high cost in computational complexity. Even though linear-complexity approximation…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2019-05-29 Kubilay Atasu , Thomas Mittelholzer

This work briefly explores the possibility of approximating spatial distance (alternatively, similarity) between data points using the Isolation Forest method envisioned for outlier detection. The logic is similar to that of isolation: the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2019-11-26 David Cortes

In many robotics applications, it is necessary to compute not only the distance between the robot and the environment, but also its derivative - for example, when using control barrier functions. However, since the traditional Euclidean…

In this paper, we develop the metric geometry of ranking statistics, proving that the two major permutation distances in the statistics literature -- Kendall tau and Spearman footrule -- extend naturally to incomplete rankings with both…

Metric Geometry · Mathematics 2026-02-12 Moon Duchin , Kristopher Tapp

In this paper, we study the metric distortion of deterministic social choice rules that choose a winning candidate from a set of candidates based on voter preferences. Voters and candidates are located in an underlying metric space. A voter…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2019-05-07 Kamesh Munagala , Kangning Wang

We study the genealogical distance of two randomly chosen individuals in a population that evolves according to a two type Moran model with mutation and selection. We prove that this distance is stochastically smaller than the corresponding…

Probability · Mathematics 2018-04-24 Max Grieshammer

An edit distance is a metric between words that quantifies how two words differ by counting the number of edit operations needed to transform one word into the other one. A word f is said isometric with respect to an edit distance if, for…

Formal Languages and Automata Theory · Computer Science 2023-03-07 Marcella Anselmo , Giuseppa Castiglione , Manuela Flores , Dora Giammarresi , Maria Madonia , Sabrina Mantaci

An important problem in geometric computing is defining and computing similarity between two geometric shapes, e.g. point sets, curves and surfaces, etc. Important geometric and topological information of many shapes can be captured by…

Computational Geometry · Computer Science 2015-08-17 Hangjun Xu

Measures of similarity (or dissimilarity) are a key ingredient to many machine learning algorithms. We introduce DID, a pairwise dissimilarity measure applicable to a wide range of data spaces, which leverages the data's internal structure…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2022-03-08 Théophile Cantelobre , Carlo Ciliberto , Benjamin Guedj , Alessandro Rudi

The integrity of elections is central to democratic systems. However, a myriad of malicious actors aspire to influence election outcomes for financial or political benefit. A common means to such ends is by manipulating perceptions of the…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-06-22 Junlin Wu , Andrew Estornell , Lecheng Kong , Yevgeniy Vorobeychik

Maximum bipartite matching is a fundamental algorithmic problem which can be solved in polynomial time. We consider a natural variant in which there is a separation constraint: the vertices on one side lie on a path or a grid, and two…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2023-03-20 Pasin Manurangsi , Erel Segal-Halevi , Warut Suksompong

We study the computational complexity of the map redistricting problem (gerrymandering). Mathematically, the electoral district designer (gerrymanderer) attempts to partition a weighted graph into $k$ connected components (districts) such…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2024-01-09 Jack Dippel , Max Dupré la Tour , April Niu , Sanjukta Roy , Adrian Vetta

The normalized edit distance is one of the distances derived from the edit distance. It is useful in some applications because it takes into account the lengths of the two strings compared. The normalized edit distance is not defined in…

Neural and Evolutionary Computing · Computer Science 2013-12-09 Muhammad Marwan Muhammad Fuad

In a recently introduced model of successive committee elections (Bredereck et al., AAAI-20) for a given set of ordinal or approval preferences one aims to find a sequence of a given length of "best" same-size committees such that each…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-05-27 Pallavi Jain , Andrzej Kaczmarczyk