Matroids are Equitable

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Akrami, Hannaneh, Liu, Siyue, Raj, Roshan, Végh, László A.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Akrami, Hannaneh
Liu, Siyue
Raj, Roshan
Végh, László A.
author_facet Akrami, Hannaneh
Liu, Siyue
Raj, Roshan
Végh, László A.
contents We show that if the ground set of a matroid can be partitioned into $k\ge 2$ bases, then for any given subset $S$ of the ground set, there is a partition into $k$ bases such that the sizes of the intersections of the bases with $S$ may differ by at most one. This settles the matroid equitability conjecture by Fekete and Szabó (Electron. J. Comb. 2011) in the affirmative. We also investigate equitable splittings of two disjoint sets $S_1$ and $S_2$, and show that there is a partition into $k$ bases such that the sizes of the intersections with $S_1$ may differ by at most one and the sizes of the intersections with $S_2$ may differ by at most two; this is the best one can hope for arbitrary matroids. We also derive applications of this result into matroid constrained fair division problems. We show that there exists a matroid-constrained fair division that is envy-free up to one item if the valuations are identical and tri-valued additive. We also show that for bi-valued additive valuations, there exists a matroid-constrained allocation that provides everyone their maximin share.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_12100
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Matroids are Equitable
Akrami, Hannaneh
Liu, Siyue
Raj, Roshan
Végh, László A.
Combinatorics
Discrete Mathematics
Computer Science and Game Theory
We show that if the ground set of a matroid can be partitioned into $k\ge 2$ bases, then for any given subset $S$ of the ground set, there is a partition into $k$ bases such that the sizes of the intersections of the bases with $S$ may differ by at most one. This settles the matroid equitability conjecture by Fekete and Szabó (Electron. J. Comb. 2011) in the affirmative. We also investigate equitable splittings of two disjoint sets $S_1$ and $S_2$, and show that there is a partition into $k$ bases such that the sizes of the intersections with $S_1$ may differ by at most one and the sizes of the intersections with $S_2$ may differ by at most two; this is the best one can hope for arbitrary matroids. We also derive applications of this result into matroid constrained fair division problems. We show that there exists a matroid-constrained fair division that is envy-free up to one item if the valuations are identical and tri-valued additive. We also show that for bi-valued additive valuations, there exists a matroid-constrained allocation that provides everyone their maximin share.
title Matroids are Equitable
topic Combinatorics
Discrete Mathematics
Computer Science and Game Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.12100