arXiv subjects

Meghana Nasre

Publications and source records attributed to Meghana Nasre.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Stability Notions for Hospital Residents with Sizes

The Hospital Residents problem with sizes (HRS) is a generalisation of the well-studied hospital residents (HR) problem. In the HRS problem, an agent a has a size s(a) and the agent occupies s(a) many positions of the hospital h when assigned to h. The notion of stability in this setting is suitably modified, and it is known that deciding whether an HRS instance admits a stable matching is NP-hard under severe restrictions. In this work, we explore a variation of stability, which we term occupancy-based stability. This notion was defined by McDermid and Manlove (J. of Comb. Opt. 2010) but remained unexplored to the best of our knowledge. In our work, we show that every HRS instance admits an occupancy-stable matching. We further show that computing a maximum-size occupancy-stable matching is NP-hard, even in the presence of master list ordering. We complement our hardness result by providing an approximation algorithm with a guarantee strictly better than 3 for the max-size occupancy-stable matching problem. Given that the classical notion of stability adapted for HRS is not guaranteed to exist in general, we show a practical restriction under which a stable matching is guaranteed to exist. We present an efficient algorithm to output a stable matching in the restricted HRS instances. We also provide an alternate NP-hardness proof for the decision version of the stable matching problem for HRS which imposes a severe restriction on the number of neighbours of non-unit sized agents.

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arXiv2026

Optimal Capacity Modification for Stable Matchings with Ties

We consider the Hospitals/Residents (HR) problem in the presence of ties in hospital preferences. Among the three notions of stability, namely weak stability, strong stability, and super-stability, we focus on the notion of strong stability. Strong stability has many desirable properties, both theoretically and in practice; however, its existence is not guaranteed. In this paper, our objective is to optimally increase the quotas of hospitals to ensure that a strongly stable matching exists in the modified instance. We explore two natural optimization criteria: (i) minimizing the total capacity increase across all hospitals (MINSUM) and (ii) minimizing the maximum capacity increase for any hospital (MINMAX). We show that the MINSUM problem admits a polynomial-time algorithm. We also establish an analog of the well-known rural hospitals theorem [Gale & Sotomayor, 1985; Roth, 1986], adapted to the MINSUM augmentation setting. We consider a generalization of the MINSUM problem in which each hospital incurs a cost per unit increase in its quota. We show that the cost version of the MINSUM problem is NP-hard and inapproximable within any multiplicative factor, even if the costs are zero or one. For the MINSUM objective with a set of forced edges, we give a polynomial-time algorithm. In contrast to the above results for the MINSUM problem, we show that the MINMAX problem is NP-hard. When hospital preference lists have ties of length at most $\ell+1$, we give a polynomial-time algorithm that increases each hospital's quota by at most $\ell$, ensuring the resulting instance admits a strongly stable matching. Moreover, among all such augmentations, our algorithm outputs the best strongly stable matching from the residents' perspective.

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arXiv2026

Critical Relaxed-Stable Matchings with Ties in the Many-to-Many Setting

We study the many-to-many bipartite matching problem in the presence of preferences where ties, as well as lower quotas, may appear on both sides of the bipartition. The input is a bipartite graph $G=(A \cup B, E)$, where each vertex in $A \cup B$ has a positive upper quota and a non-negative lower quota denoting the maximum and minimum number of vertices that can be assigned to it from its neighborhood. Additionally, each vertex specifies a preference ordering, possibly containing ties, over its neighbors. A \textit{critical} matching is a matching which fulfills vertex lower quotas to the maximum possible extent. We seek to compute a matching that is critical as well as optimal with respect to the preferences of vertices. Stability, a well-accepted notion of optimality in the presence of two-sided preferences, is generalized to weak-stability in the presence of ties. However, a matching that is critical as well as weakly stable may not exist. Popularity is another well-investigated notion of optimality for the two-sided preference model; however, in the presence of ties (even without lower quotas), a popular matching may not exist. We, therefore, consider the notion of relaxed stability, which was introduced and studied by Krishnaa, Limaye, Nasre, and Nimbhorkar~(JoCO 2023). We show that a matching that is critical as well as relaxed-stable always exists, although computing a maximum-size relaxed-stable matching turns out to be NP-hard. Our main contribution achieves a $\frac{2}{3}$-approximation to the maximum cardinality critical relaxed-stable matching in polynomial time.

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arXiv2025

Group Fairness and Multi-criteria Optimization in School Assignment

We consider the problem of assigning students to schools, when students have different utilities for schools and schools have capacity. There are additional group fairness considerations over students that can be captured either by concave objectives, or additional constraints on the groups. We present approximation algorithms for this problem via convex program rounding that achieve various trade-offs between utility violation, capacity violation, and running time. We also show that our techniques easily extend to the setting where there are arbitrary covering constraints on the feasible assignment, capturing multi-criteria and ranking optimization.

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arXiv2025

Generalized Capacity Planning for the Hospital-Residents Problem

The Hospital Residents setting models important problems like school choice, assignment of undergraduate students to degree programs, among many others. In this setting, fixed quotas are associated with the programs that limit the number of agents that can be assigned to them. Motivated by scenarios where all agents must be matched, we propose and study a generalized capacity planning problem, which allows cost-controlled flexibility with respect to quotas. Our setting is an extension of the Hospital Resident setting where programs have the usual quota as well as an associated cost, indicating the cost of matching an agent beyond the initial quotas. We seek to compute a matching that matches all agents and is optimal with respect to preferences, and minimizes either a local or a global objective on cost. We show that there is a sharp contrast -- minimizing the local objective is polynomial-time solvable, whereas minimizing the global objective is NP-hard. On the positive side, we present approximation algorithms for the global objective in the general case and a particular hard case. We achieve the approximation guarantee for the special hard case via a linear programming based algorithm. We strengthen the NP-hardness by showing a matching lower bound to our algorithmic result.

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arXiv2023

Online Algorithms for Matchings with Proportional Fairness Constraints and Diversity Constraints

Matching problems with group-fairness constraints and diversity constraints have numerous applications such as in allocation problems, committee selection, school choice, etc. Moreover, online matching problems have lots of applications in ad allocations and other e-commerce problems like product recommendation in digital marketing. We study two problems involving assigning {\em items} to {\em platforms}, where items belong to various {\em groups} depending on their attributes; the set of items are available offline and the platforms arrive online. In the first problem, we study online matchings with {\em proportional fairness constraints}. Here, each platform on arrival should either be assigned a set of items in which the fraction of items from each group is within specified bounds or be assigned no items; the goal is to assign items to platforms in order to maximize the number of items assigned to platforms. In the second problem, we study online matchings with {\em diversity constraints}, i.e. for each platform, absolute lower bounds are specified for each group. Each platform on arrival should either be assigned a set of items that satisfy these bounds or be assigned no items; the goal is to maximize the set of platforms that get matched. We study approximation algorithms and hardness results for these problems. The technical core of our proofs is a new connection between these problems and the problem of matchings in hypergraphs. Our experimental evaluation shows the performance of our algorithms on real-world and synthetic datasets exceeds our theoretical guarantees.

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arXiv2023

Popular Critical Matchings in the Many-to-Many Setting

We consider the many-to-many bipartite matching problem in the presence of two-sided preferences and two-sided lower quotas. The input to our problem is a bipartite graph G=(A U B, E), where each vertex in A U B specifies a strict preference ordering over its neighbors. Each vertex has an upper quota and a lower quota denoting the maximum and minimum number of vertices that can be assigned to it from its neighborhood. In the many-to-many setting with two-sided lower quotas, informally, a critical matching is a matching which fulfils vertex lower quotas to the maximum possible extent. This is a natural generalization of the definition of critical matching in the one-to-one setting [Kavitha T., FSTTCS 2021]. Our goal in the given problem is to find a popular matching in the set of critical matchings. A matching is popular in a given set of matchings if it remains undefeated in a head-to-head election with any matching in that set. Here, vertices cast votes between pairs of matchings. We show that there always exists a matching that is popular in the set of critical matchings. We present an efficient algorithm to compute such a matching of the largest size. We prove the popularity of our matching using a dual certificate.

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arXiv2022

Envy-free matchings with cost-controlled quotas

We consider the problem of assigning agents to programs in the presence of two-sided preferences, commonly known as the Hospital Residents problem. In the standard setting each program has a rigid upper-quota which cannot be violated. Motivated by applications where quotas are governed by resource availability, we propose and study the problem of computing optimal matchings with cost-controlled quotas -- denoted as the CCQ setting. In the CCQ setting we have a cost associated with every program which denotes the cost of matching a single agent to the program. Our goal is to compute a matching that matches all agents, respects the preference lists of agents and programs and is optimal with respect to the cost criteria. We consider envy-freeness as a notion of optimality and study two optimization problems with respect to the costs -- minimize the total cost (MINSUM) and minimize the maximum cost at a program (MINMAX). We show that there is a sharp contrast in the complexity status of these two problems -- MINMAX is polynomial time solvable whereas MINSUM is NP-hard and hard to approximate within a constant factor unless P = NP even under severe restrictions. On the positive side, we present approximation algorithms for the MINSUM for the general case and a special hard case. We chieve the approximation guarantee for the special case via a technically involved linear programming (LP) based algorithm. We remark that our LP is for the general case of the problem.

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arXiv2021

Matchings with Group Fairness Constraints: Online and Offline Algorithms

We consider the problem of assigning items to platforms in the presence of group fairness constraints. In the input, each item belongs to certain categories, called classes in this paper. Each platform specifies the group fairness constraints through an upper bound on the number of items it can serve from each class. Additionally, each platform also has an upper bound on the total number of items it can serve. The goal is to assign items to platforms so as to maximize the number of items assigned while satisfying the upper bounds of each class. In some cases, there is a revenue associated with matching an item to a platform, then the goal is to maximize the revenue generated. This problem models several important real-world problems like ad-auctions, scheduling, resource allocations, school choice etc.We also show an interesting connection to computing a generalized maximum independent set on hypergraphs and ranking items under group fairness constraints. We show that if the classes are arbitrary, then the problem is NP-hard and has a strong inapproximability. We consider the problem in both online and offline settings under natural restrictions on the classes. Under these restrictions, the problem continues to remain NP-hard but admits approximation algorithms with small approximation factors. We also implement some of the algorithms. Our experiments show that the algorithms work well in practice both in terms of efficiency and the number of items that get assigned to some platform.

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arXiv2020

Envy-freeness and Relaxed Stability under lower quotas

We consider the problem of matchings under two-sided preferences in the presence of maximum as well as minimum quota requirements for the agents. This setting, studied as the Hospital Residents with Lower Quotas (HRLQ) in literature, models important real world problems like assigning medical interns (residents) to hospitals, and teaching assistants to instructors where a minimum guarantee is essential. When there are no minimum quotas, stability is the de-facto notion of optimality. However, in the presence of minimum quotas, ensuring stability and simultaneously satisfying lower quotas is not an attainable goal in many instances. To address this, a relaxation of stability known as envy-freeness, is proposed in literature. In our work, we thoroughly investigate envy-freeness from a computational view point. Our results show that computing envy-free matchings that match maximum number of agents is computationally hard and also hard to approximate up to a constant factor. Additionally, it is known that envy-free matchings satisfying lower-quotas may not exist. To circumvent these drawbacks, we propose a new notion called relaxed stability. We show that relaxed stable matchings are guaranteed to exist even in the presence of lower-quotas. Despite the computational intractability of finding a largest matching that is feasible and relaxed stable, we give efficient algorithms that compute a constant factor approximation to this matching in terms of size.

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arXiv2020

Trade-offs in dynamic coloring for bipartite and general graphs

We present trade-offs in the incremental and fully dynamic settings to maintian a proper coloring. For any fully dynamic $2$-coloring algorithm, the maximum of the update time, number of recolorings, and query time is $Ω(\log n)$. We present a deterministic fully dynamic $2$-coloring algorithm with $O(\log^2 n)$ amortized update time, $O(\log n)$ amortized query time, and one recoloring in the worst case. For any incremental $2$-coloring algorithm which explicitly maintains the color of every vertex after each update, the amortized update time and the amortized number of recolorings is $Ω(\log n)$. For such an algorithm, in the worst case the update time and the number of recolorings is $Ω(n)$. We then design a deterministic incremental $2$-coloring algorithm which explicitly maintains the color of every vertex after each update, with amortized $O(\log n)$ update time and amortized $O(\log n)$ many recolorings. Further, in the worst case the update time and the number of recolorings is $O(n)$. Further, we present a deterministic incremental $(1+2 \log n)$-coloring algorithm which explicitly maintains the color of every vertex after each update, with $O(α(n))$ amortized update time, at most one recoloring and $O(1)$ query time. We then show a deterministic incremental $2$-coloring algorithm which does not maintain color of every vertex after each update, with amortized $O(α(n))$ update time, amortized $O(α(n))$ recolorings, and amortized $O(α(n))$ query time. For general graphs and graphs of bounded arboricity $γ$ and maximum degree $Δ$ we present a deterministic $(Δ+1)$-coloring algorithm with $O(\sqrt{m})$ update time, $O(1)$ query time, and one recoloring. Finally, we show a deterministic $(Δ+1)$-coloring algorithm with amortized $O(γ+ \log{n})$ update time, $O(1)$ query time, and one recoloring.

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arXiv2018

Dichotomy Results for Classified Rank-Maximal Matchings and Popular Matchings

In this paper, we consider the problem of computing an optimal matching in a bipartite graph where elements of one side of the bipartition specify preferences over the other side, and one or both sides can have capacities and classifications. The input instance is a bipartite graph G=(A U P,E), where A is a set of applicants, P is a set of posts, and each applicant ranks its neighbors in an order of preference, possibly involving ties. Moreover, each vertex v in A U P has a quota q(v) denoting the maximum number of partners it can have in any allocation of applicants to posts - referred to as a {\em matching} in this paper. A classification for a vertex u is a collection of subsets of neighbors of u. Each subset (class) has an upper quota denoting the maximum number of vertices from the class that can be matched to u. The goal is to find a matching that is optimal amongst all the feasible matchings, which are matchings that respect quotas of all the vertices and classes. We consider two well-studied notions of optimality namely popularity and rank-maximality. The notion of rank-maximality involves finding a matching in $G$ with maximum number of rank-$1$ edges, subject to that, maximum number of rank-2 edges and so on. We present an O(|E|^2)-time algorithm for finding a feasible rank-maximal matching, when each classification is a laminar family. We complement this with an NP-hardness result when classes are non-laminar even under strict preference lists, and even when only posts have classifications, and each applicant has a quota of one. We show an analogous dichotomy result for computing a popular matching amongst feasible matchings (if one exists) in a bipartite graph with posts having capacities and classifications and applicants having a quota of one.

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arXiv2018

How good are Popular Matchings?

In this paper, we consider the Hospital Residents problem (HR) and the Hospital Residents problem with Lower Quotas (HRLQ). In this model with two sided preferences, stability is a well accepted notion of optimality. However, in the presence of lower quotas, a stable and feasible matching need not exist. For the HRLQ problem, our goal therefore is to output a good feasible matching assuming that a feasible matching exists. Computing matchings with minimum number of blocking pairs (MinBP) and minimum number of blocking residents (MinBR) are known to be NP-Complete. The only approximation algorithms for these problems work under severe restrictions on the preference lists. We present an algorithm which circumvents this restriction and computes a popular matching in the HRLQ instance. We show that on data-sets generated using various generators, our algorithm performs very well in terms of blocking pairs and blocking residents. Yokoi (ISAAC 2017) recently studied envy-free matchings for the HRLQ problem. We propose a simple modification to Yokoi's algorithm to output a maximal envy-free matching. We observe that popular matchings outperform envy-free matchings on several parameters of practical importance, like size, number of blocking pairs, number of blocking residents. In the absence of lower quotas, that is, in the Hospital Residents (HR) problem, stable matchings are guaranteed to exist. Even in this case, we show that popularity is a practical alternative to stability. For instance, on synthetic data-sets generated using a particular model, as well as on real world data-sets, a popular matching is on an average 8-10% larger in size, matches more number of residents to their top-choice, and more residents prefer the popular matching as compared to a stable matching. Our comprehensive study reveals the practical appeal of popular matchings for the HR and HRLQ problems.

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arXiv2017

Popular Matching with Lower Quotas

We consider the well-studied Hospital Residents (HR) problem in the presence of lower quotas (LQ). The input instance consists of a bipartite graph $G = (\mathcal{R} \cup \mathcal{H}, E)$ where $\mathcal{R}$ and $\mathcal{H}$ denote sets of residents and hospitals respectively. Every vertex has a preference list that imposes a strict ordering on its neighbors. In addition, each hospital $h$ has an associated upper-quota $q^+(h)$ and lower-quota $q^-(h)$. A matching $M$ in $G$ is an assignment of residents to hospitals, and $M$ is said to be feasible if every resident is assigned to at most one hospital and a hospital $h$ is assigned at least $q^-(h)$ and at most $q^+(h)$ residents. Stability is a de-facto notion of optimality in a model where both sets of vertices have preferences. A matching is stable if no unassigned pair has an incentive to deviate from it. It is well-known that an instance of the HRLQ problem need not admit a feasible stable matching. In this paper, we consider the notion of popularity for the HRLQ problem. A matching $M$ is popular if no other matching $M'$ gets more votes than $M$ when vertices vote between $M$ and $M'$. When there are no lower quotas, there always exists a stable matching and it is known that every stable matching is popular. We show that in an HRLQ instance, although a feasible stable matching need not exist, there is always a matching that is popular in the set of feasible matchings. We give an efficient algorithm to compute a maximum cardinality matching that is popular amongst all the feasible matchings in an HRLQ instance.

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arXiv2016

Popularity in the generalized Hospital Residents Setting

We consider the problem of computing popular matchings in a bipartite graph G = (R U H, E) where R and H denote a set of residents and a set of hospitals respectively. Each hospital h has a positive capacity denoting the number of residents that can be matched to h. The residents and the hospitals specify strict preferences over each other. This is the well-studied Hospital Residents (HR) problem which is a generalization of the Stable Marriage (SM) problem. The goal is to assign residents to hospitals optimally while respecting the capacities of the hospitals. Stability is a well-accepted notion of optimality in such problems. However, motivated by the need for larger cardinality matchings, alternative notions of optimality like popularity have been investigated in the SM setting. In this paper, we consider a generalized HR setting -- namely the Laminar Classified Stable Matchings (LCSM+) problem. Here, additionally, hospitals can specify classifications over residents in their preference lists and classes have upper quotas. We show the following new results: We define a notion of popularity and give a structural characterization of popular matchings for the LCSM+ problem. Assume n = |R| + |H| and m = |E|. We give an O(mn) time algorithm for computing a maximum cardinality popular matching in an LCSM+ instance. We give an O(mn^2) time algorithm for computing a matching that is popular amongst the maximum cardinality matchings in an LCSM+ instance.

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arXiv2014

Decremental All-Pairs ALL Shortest Paths and Betweenness Centrality

We consider the all pairs all shortest paths (APASP) problem, which maintains the shortest path dag rooted at every vertex in a directed graph G=(V,E) with positive edge weights. For this problem we present a decremental algorithm (that supports the deletion of a vertex, or weight increases on edges incident to a vertex). Our algorithm runs in amortized O(\vstar^2 \cdot \log n) time per update, where n=|V|, and \vstar bounds the number of edges that lie on shortest paths through any given vertex. Our APASP algorithm can be used for the decremental computation of betweenness centrality (BC), a graph parameter that is widely used in the analysis of large complex networks. No nontrivial decremental algorithm for either problem was known prior to our work. Our method is a generalization of the decremental algorithm of Demetrescu and Italiano [DI04] for unique shortest paths, and for graphs with \vstar =O(n), we match the bound in [DI04]. Thus for graphs with a constant number of shortest paths between any pair of vertices, our algorithm maintains APASP and BC scores in amortized time O(n^2 \log n) under decremental updates, regardless of the number of edges in the graph.

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arXiv2014

Rank Maximal Matchings -- Structure and Algorithms

Let G = (A U P, E) be a bipartite graph where A denotes a set of agents, P denotes a set of posts and ranks on the edges denote preferences of the agents over posts. A matching M in G is rank-maximal if it matches the maximum number of applicants to their top-rank post, subject to this, the maximum number of applicants to their second rank post and so on. In this paper, we develop a switching graph characterization of rank-maximal matchings, which is a useful tool that encodes all rank-maximal matchings in an instance. The characterization leads to simple and efficient algorithms for several interesting problems. In particular, we give an efficient algorithm to compute the set of rank-maximal pairs in an instance. We show that the problem of counting the number of rank-maximal matchings is #P-Complete and also give an FPRAS for the problem. Finally, we consider the problem of deciding whether a rank-maximal matching is popular among all the rank-maximal matchings in a given instance, and give an efficient algorithm for the problem.

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arXiv2013

Betweenness Centrality -- Incremental and Faster

We consider the incremental computation of the betweenness centrality of all vertices in a large complex network modeled as a graph G = (V, E), directed or undirected, with positive real edge-weights. The current widely used algorithm to compute the betweenness centrality of all vertices in G is the Brandes algorithm that runs in O(mn + n^2 log n) time, where n = |V| and m = |E|. We present an incremental algorithm that updates the betweenness centrality score of all vertices in G when a new edge is added to G, or the weight of an existing edge is reduced. Our incremental algorithm runs in O(m' n + n^2) time, where m' is the size of a certain subset of E*, the set of edges in G that lie on a shortest path. We achieve the same bound for the more general incremental update of a vertex v, where the edge update can be performed on any subset of edges incident to v. Our incremental algorithm is the first algorithm that is asymptotically faster on sparse graphs than recomputing with the Brandes algorithm. Our algorithm is also likely to be much faster than the Brandes algorithm on dense graphs since m*, the size of E*, is often close to linear in n. Our incremental algorithm is very simple and the only data structures it uses are arrays, lists, and stack. We give an efficient cache-oblivious implementation that incurs O(scan(n^2) + n sort(m')) cache misses, where scan and sort are well-known measures for efficient caching. We also give a static algorithm for computing betweenness centrality of all vertices that runs in time O(m* n + n^2 log n), which is faster than the Brandes algorithm on any graph with n log n = o(m) and m* = o(m).

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