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Concept

Envy-freeness

The property of a division that nobody values another's share above their own. It is a stronger requirement than each person getting a fair share by their own reckoning, and for three or more people it is much harder to achieve.

Named by 7 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

One cake, one halving cut at 4/9, and two measures of it. A cake as a bar with two step valuations above and below it, the cutter's halving cut marked, and a table of both people's exact value of each piece.

One cuts and the other chooses

The oldest rule in fair division promises each of two people at least half the cake by their own measure, and it keeps that promise exactly. It does not promise what the word "fair" is usually asked to carry, and the gap opens the moment the two measures disagree across the cut.

applied · Fair division Three people, a trimmed piece, and the nine comparisons that settle it. The four stages of the Selfridge–Conway division drawn along a cake, with the full three-by-three matrix of each person's value of each share.

Three people and a trimmed piece

For two people, one cut and one choice deliver a division nobody would swap out of. For three, the same promise costs a trimming, a residue and a choosing order contrived so that an advantage once given cannot be taken back — and the verdict is not three numbers but a whole three-by-three matrix.

applied · Fair division Every allocation of 3 indivisible items, and not one of them envy-free. A value matrix for indivisible goods with the round-robin allocation shaded, the exhaustive counts of envy-free and EF1 allocations, and a control matrix on which envy-free allocations do exist.

Envy-free, up to one item

A cake can be cut anywhere, and every guarantee about fair cutting was bought with that freedom. Take the knife away and the exhaustive search over every allocation of three objects returns nothing envy-free at all — so the subject weakened the word until taking turns was enough to reach it.

applied · Fair division Maximising the product of two people's values. The frontier of value pairs from dividing 4 goods between two people, with the points maximising the product, the sum and the smaller value. The product's maximum is (65.0, 54.2) and is envy-free.

The product that makes a division fair

Divide goods to make the total happiness as large as possible and the result can be monstrously unfair; make the least happy person as happy as possible and it can waste. Multiply the people's values together and maximise the product instead, and something unexpected happens — nobody envies anybody when goods can be split, and nobody envies by more than one item when they cannot.

applied · Fair division Envy-free up to one item, and up to any: three people, five items. A value matrix for three people, five items with two allocations beneath it: one envy-free up to one item but not up to any, and one envy-free; the counts over all 243 allocations beside it.

Envy that any single item would cure

Envy-free up to one item lets a person's envy be excused if removing the envied bundle's best item would cure it. The stronger standard asks that removing any item would — even the one that person values least. Every allocation of three people's items can be searched, and an allocation meeting the stronger standard was there every time; for two people cut and choose finds one, for three it took until 2020 to prove, and for four nobody knows.

applied · Fair division Dividing a rent of 90 three ways, on a 9-step grid. A triangle of possible rent splits, triangulated into 81 small triangles, with each grid point coloured by the room its housemate would pick; 3 small triangles have all three rooms.

A rent nobody envies

Three housemates, three rooms that are not alike, one rent. Every way of splitting the rent is a point of a triangle; ask, at each point of a fine grid, which room one housemate would take at those prices, taking turns so that each small triangle has one corner for each of them. Sperner's lemma then promises a small triangle where all three would choose different rooms — and as the grid is refined, the envy at that triangle shrinks to nothing.

applied · Fair division Every envy-free way to split one rent among three rooms. A triangle of rent splits of 90 with the envy-free hexagon (corners 30, 30, 30; 46.7, 21.7, 21.7; 50, 25, 15; 45, 35, 10; 35, 40, 15; 28.3, 33.3, 28.3) and the maximin, equal and grid splits marked.

A rent nobody envies is not one rent

Three housemates, three rooms, one rent, and Sperner's lemma promises a split nobody envies. It does not promise one split. For housemates who judge rooms by value for money, the envy-free splits fill a polygon, and in a typical house some room's rent can move across a quarter of the total without anyone envying anyone. Choosing inside it is a second decision. The rule the rent-splitting websites use makes the worst-off housemate as well off as possible, and in almost every house it rewards a housemate who understates what the rooms are worth.

applied · Fair division

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Fair divisionValuation measureDivide and chooseIndivisible goodsProportionalityConvexityCounting argumentAllocationConjectureDualityEfficiencyEnvy matrix

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