Combinatorial Philosopher Inequalities

Enze Sun; Zhihao Gavin Tang; Yifan Wang

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arXiv · 2510.10039

Combinatorial Philosopher Inequalities

Enze Sun·Zhihao Gavin Tang·Yifan Wang

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Abstract

In online combinatorial allocation, agents arrive sequentially and items are allocated in an online manner. The algorithm designer only knows the distribution of each agent's valuation, while the actual realization of the valuation is revealed only upon her arrival. Against the offline benchmark, Feldman, Gravin, and Lucier (SODA 2015) designed an optimal $0.5$-competitive algorithm for XOS agents. An emerging line of work focuses on designing approximation algorithms against the (computationally unbounded) optimal online algorithm. The primary goal is to design algorithms with approximation ratios strictly greater than $0.5$, surpassing the impossibility result against the offline optimum. Positive results are established for unit-demand agents (Papadimitriou, Pollner, Saberi, Wajc, MOR 2024), and for $k$-demand agents (Braun, Kesselheim, Pollner, Saberi, EC 2024). In this paper, we extend the existing positive results for agents with submodular valuations by establishing a $0.5 + \Omega(1)$ approximation against a newly constructed online configuration LP relaxation for the combinatorial allocation setting. Meanwhile, we provide negative results for agents with XOS valuations by providing a $0.5$ integrality gap for the online configuration LP, showing an obstacle of existing approaches.

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Enze Sun, Zhihao Gavin Tang, Yifan Wang. 2025-10-11. Combinatorial Philosopher Inequalities. https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.10039

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