A Rule for Committee Selection with Soft Diversity Constraints

TL;DR

This paper introduces a practical polynomial-time algorithm for selecting diverse committees using soft constraints, overcoming computational and feasibility limitations of previous methods.

Contribution

It presents a novel algorithm that efficiently handles diversity constraints with soft bounds, satisfying natural axioms and addressing previous intractability issues.

Findings

Algorithm is polynomial-time and practical.

Successfully handles cases where hard constraints are infeasible.

Ensures diversity with soft bounds in committee selection.

Abstract

Committee selection with diversity or distributional constraints is a ubiquitous problem. However, many of the formal approaches proposed so far have certain drawbacks including (1) computationally intractability in general, and (2) inability to suggest a solution for certain instances where the hard constraints cannot be met. We propose a practical and polynomial-time algorithm for diverse committee selection that draws on the idea of using soft bounds and satisfies natural axioms.