Facility Location Problem with Aleatory Agents

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Auricchio, Gennaro, Zhang, Jie
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Auricchio, Gennaro
Zhang, Jie
author_facet Auricchio, Gennaro
Zhang, Jie
contents In this paper, we introduce and study the Facility Location Problem with Aleatory Agents (FLPAA), where the facility accommodates n agents larger than the number of agents reporting their preferences, namely n_r. The spare capacity is used by n_u=n-n_r aleatory agents sampled from a probability distribution μ. The goal of FLPAA is to find a location that minimizes the ex-ante social cost, which is the expected cost of the n_u agents sampled from μplus the cost incurred by the agents reporting their position. We investigate the mechanism design aspects of the FLPAA under the assumption that the Mechanism Designer (MD) lacks knowledge of the distribution $μ$ but can query k quantiles of μ. We explore the trade-off between acquiring more insights into the probability distribution and designing a better-performing mechanism, which we describe through the strong approximation ratio (SAR). The SAR of a mechanism measures the highest ratio between the cost of the mechanisms and the cost of the optimal solution on the worst-case input x and worst-case distribution μ, offering a metric for efficiency that does not depend on μ. We divide our study into four different information settings: the zero information case, in which the MD has access to no quantiles; the median information case, in which the MD has access to the median of μ; the n_u-quantile information case, in which the MD has access to n_u quantiles of its choice, and the k-quantile information case, in which the MD has access to k<n_u quantiles of its choice. For all frameworks, we propose a mechanism that is optimal or achieves a small constant SAR and pairs it with a lower bound on the SAR. In most cases, the lower bound matches the upper bound, thus no truthful mechanism can achieve a lower SAR. Lastly, we extend the FLPAA to include instances in which we must locate two facilities.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_18817
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Facility Location Problem with Aleatory Agents
Auricchio, Gennaro
Zhang, Jie
Computer Science and Game Theory
Multiagent Systems
91A68 68W25
In this paper, we introduce and study the Facility Location Problem with Aleatory Agents (FLPAA), where the facility accommodates n agents larger than the number of agents reporting their preferences, namely n_r. The spare capacity is used by n_u=n-n_r aleatory agents sampled from a probability distribution μ. The goal of FLPAA is to find a location that minimizes the ex-ante social cost, which is the expected cost of the n_u agents sampled from μplus the cost incurred by the agents reporting their position. We investigate the mechanism design aspects of the FLPAA under the assumption that the Mechanism Designer (MD) lacks knowledge of the distribution $μ$ but can query k quantiles of μ. We explore the trade-off between acquiring more insights into the probability distribution and designing a better-performing mechanism, which we describe through the strong approximation ratio (SAR). The SAR of a mechanism measures the highest ratio between the cost of the mechanisms and the cost of the optimal solution on the worst-case input x and worst-case distribution μ, offering a metric for efficiency that does not depend on μ. We divide our study into four different information settings: the zero information case, in which the MD has access to no quantiles; the median information case, in which the MD has access to the median of μ; the n_u-quantile information case, in which the MD has access to n_u quantiles of its choice, and the k-quantile information case, in which the MD has access to k<n_u quantiles of its choice. For all frameworks, we propose a mechanism that is optimal or achieves a small constant SAR and pairs it with a lower bound on the SAR. In most cases, the lower bound matches the upper bound, thus no truthful mechanism can achieve a lower SAR. Lastly, we extend the FLPAA to include instances in which we must locate two facilities.
title Facility Location Problem with Aleatory Agents
topic Computer Science and Game Theory
Multiagent Systems
91A68 68W25
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.18817