# assignment problem maximizing utility equitably

 4 1 Hi folks. I'm trying to teach myself some basics of IP and have run across a problem I can't figure out how to to formulate. Consider the problem of assigning (say) six items to three people. Each item can only be assigned to one person. Each item-person pair has a utility (the utilities sum to 1 for each person), and the objective function is to maximize the sum of the utilities. I can set this up without a problem. But what if I want to add the constraint that the sums of the utilities, for each person, are not too different? This is, I don't want anyone to get left out of the assignment. How do I add that constraint? One thing I've figured out I can do is to add one constraint per person, where the sum of their assigned utilities must be less than a constant, initially 1. At first there will be no solution, but I can back off on the constant until a solution is found. The result tends to have equitable assignments. But how can I set up the problem to avoid less-equitable solutions and solve everything in one step? It seems to me that there needs to be a constant defined, which is how much utility is lost by an assignment that is less-than equitable. But I don't know how to formulate that in the standard framework. Can someone help? I'm using Symphony, if it matters. And this is not homework. :) asked 28 Apr '11, 15:00 Harlan 83●1●1●6 accept rate: 0% If anyone would like to see a slightly-more-complex example, which I'm eventually going to blog about, the R code that sets up the data and calls Symphony is here: https://github.com/HarlanH/groupmeat-demo/blob/master/subset_test.R (28 Apr '11, 16:11) Harlan I'm interpreting "less-equitable" to mean too much spread between highest and lowest payload utilities. I think Sanjay and Bo are interpreting it to mean lowest payload utility is too small (which is not the same). You might want to clarify how you see it. (28 Apr '11, 17:59) Paul Rubin ♦♦ @Paul, I agree it's unclear. If you consider the case with too much spread, you can formulate it as a combination between max min and min max. (28 Apr '11, 18:05) Bo Jensen ♦ Thanks all for the thoughts on this! Yes, my intention was as Paul said, to minimize the min-max spread, or maybe the variance or the maximum difference from the mean. (28 Apr '11, 18:28) Harlan

 5 Consider the following model, in which $$x_{ij}$$ is the (binary) assignment of item $$i$$ to person $$j$$, $$u_{ij}$$ is the utility of item $$i$$ to person $$j$$, $$\overline{d}$$ and $$\underline{d}$$ are respectively the maximum and minimum utilities of any individual's "payload" (both nonnegative divisible variables) and $$\lambda>0$$ is a parameter reflecting the trade-off between aggregate utility and parity: \begin{array}{ccc} \max & \sum_{i,j}u_{ij}x_{ij}-\lambda(\overline{d}-\underline{d})\\ \textrm{s.t.} & \sum_{j}x_{ij}\le1 & \forall i\\ & \sum_{i}u_{ij}x_{ij}\le\overline{d} & \forall j\\ & \sum_{i}u_{ij}x_{ij}\ge\underline{d} & \forall j \end{array} The $$\lambda$$ parameter may need a little trial and error to tune. There are other possible approaches, but you are dealing with a bicriterion model (utility and parity), and there is no ducking the question of what you're willing to trade for what. answered 28 Apr '11, 16:52 Paul Rubin ♦♦ 14.6k●4●12 accept rate: 19% fbahr ♦ 4.6k●7●16 So the d‾ and d_ are variables to be solved for, like the x_{i,j}? I think I can see how that would work! Will see if I can formulate this solution and report back... (28 Apr '11, 18:40) Harlan Yes, they're variables (divisible, not integer). (29 Apr '11, 10:47) Paul Rubin ♦♦ This works well, and I really appreciate your very clear answer and explanation! (03 May '11, 13:55) Harlan 1 Here's my blog post that uses this solution! Thanks! http://www.harlan.harris.name/2011/05/optimizing-meat-shares-details/ (09 May '11, 14:42) Harlan That's great Paul, thanks! (18 Aug '11, 21:01) tdhopper
 3 Why not maximize a new variable MinUtil? Add a constraint for each person so that MinUtil <= Util[p]. answered 28 Apr '11, 16:43 SanjaySaigal 588●2●11 accept rate: 13% 2 This is a valid option, with two cautions: it masks the trade-off between overall utility and the minimum utility of any payload; and the solution with maximal MinUtil may not yield the tightest range of payload utilities (max - min). (28 Apr '11, 17:01) Paul Rubin ♦♦
 3 Don't think you will like my suggestion, but here it goes. I would solve the problem in a two stage model, because it by nature is such. You could formulate a one stage heuristic, but I would rather have the model follow the actual problem you try to capture. Here's one possible method : Solve the simple assignment problem to find the optimal solution. The found solution may have persons with low utility, which you don't want. Formulate a new model, introduce a new variable for each person which represent his total utility. Then use a max min formulation of the new variables, which becomes your objective (still a linear model). Use the objective obtained in the simple assignment to control how "bad" you will allow the solution to be as a trade, i.e input the old objective as a constraint. As a option put lower bounds on individual persons total utility. Input hotstart solution from simple assignment and solve the new model. Notice using max min you maximize the person with lowest utility, i.e as a heuristic forcing dominant persons to give away utility. Since you have the objective from the simple assignment problem, you can still control the process trade off. answered 28 Apr '11, 17:23 Bo Jensen ♦ 5.0k●2●9●19 accept rate: 14% @Bo: Just to clarify, when you say put the original objective in as a constraint, you mean total_utility_sum >= optimal_sum - epsilon or total_utility_sum >= (1-epsilon)*optimal_sum, right? (28 Apr '11, 17:56) Paul Rubin ♦♦ @Paul, yes correct, though it might be more than "epsilon", depending on the user :-) (28 Apr '11, 17:59) Bo Jensen ♦ I actually do sorta like your solution! It's certainly more justifiable than the back-off I was doing before. Will ponder it. (28 Apr '11, 18:30) Harlan 1 Should you need input on how to formulate max min, then it's quite similar to formulating L infinity norm as touched in my old slides http://slidesha.re/kgQzNc. (28 Apr '11, 18:42) Bo Jensen ♦
 3 To do a bit of summarizing, and without prejudice to whether parity is measured by minimum individual utility or the spread in individual utilities, there are three (among more than three) options emerging here: maximize total utility with a lower bound on parity; maximize parity with a lower bound on total utility; or smash the two criteria together with "Archimedean" weights (my answer). Other options include Goal Programming (non-Archimedean weights), interactive multicriterion optimization, and paralysis by analysis. If you're willing to do several optimizations while looping over a parameter, any of those first three methods can be used to generate a Pareto frontier that will give you an explicit representation of utility-parity tradeoffs. Don't know if that's of interest, or if you need an automated no-human-judgment solution. answered 28 Apr '11, 18:04 Paul Rubin ♦♦ 14.6k●4●12 accept rate: 19% I think he, like most people, is looking for the "smash-one-stage" method i.e your answer :-) (28 Apr '11, 18:09) Bo Jensen ♦ Hulk Smash is indeed what I was thinking of! Which doesn't mean it's what I should have been thinking of... (28 Apr '11, 18:32) Harlan Actually, I need to back off the Pareto frontier comment a bit. The side constraints relating to either parity or utility (depending on which way it's modeled) screw up the integrality condition, so sensitivity analysis gets tricky. (29 Apr '11, 10:50) Paul Rubin ♦♦
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