Publication Type

Conference Proceeding Article

Version

acceptedVersion

Publication Date

8-2023

Abstract

Submodular function maximization is a fundamental combinatorial optimization problem with plenty of applications – including data summarization, influence maximization, and recommendation. In many of these problems, the goal is to find a solution that maximizes the average utility over all users, for each of whom the utility is defined by a monotone submodular function. However, when the population of users is composed of several demographic groups, another critical problem is whether the utility is fairly distributed across different groups. Although the utility and fairness objectives are both desirable, they might contradict each other, and, to the best of our knowledge, little attention has been paid to optimizing them jointly.To fill this gap, we propose a new problem called Bicriteria Submodular Maximization (BSM) to balance utility and fairness. Specifically, it requires finding a fixed-size solution to maximize the utility function, subject to the value of the fairness function not being below a threshold. Since BSM is inapproximable within any constant factor, we focus on designing efficient instancedependent approximation schemes. Our algorithmic proposal comprises two methods, with different approximation factors, obtained by converting a BSM instance into other submodular optimization problem instances. Using real-world and synthetic datasets, we showcase applications of our proposed methods in three submodular maximization problems: maximum coverage, influence maximization, and facility location.

Keywords

submodular function maximization, Bicriteria Submodular Maximization

Discipline

Databases and Information Systems

Research Areas

Data Science and Engineering

Publication

Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Extending Database Technology (EDBT), Paestum, Italy, March 25-28

First Page

1

Last Page

14

ISBN

9783893180912

Identifier

10.48786/edbt.2024.01

Publisher

Open Proceedings

City or Country

Paestum, Italy

Copyright Owner and License

Authors

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.48786/edbt.2024.01

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