A Quantitative Measure Of Fairness And Discrimination For Resource Allocation In Shared Computer Systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a universal, quantitative fairness index for resource allocation in distributed systems, providing an intuitive and application-independent measure of fairness and discrimination.

Contribution

It proposes a new bounded fairness index applicable to any resource sharing problem, addressing limitations of previous measures.

Findings

Fairness index ranges between 0 and 1, facilitating intuitive understanding.

Discrimination index is defined as 1 minus the fairness index.

The measure is independent of resource amount and applicable across various scenarios.

Abstract

Fairness is an important performance criterion in all resource allocation schemes, including those in distributed computer systems. However, it is often specified only qualitatively. The quantitative measures proposed in the literature are either too specific to a particular application, or suffer from some undesirable characteristics. In this paper, we have introduced a quantitative measure called Indiex of FRairness. The index is applicable to any resource sharing or allocation problem. It is independent of the amount of the resource. The fairness index always lies between 0 and 1. This boundedness aids intuitive understanding of the fairness index. For example, a distribution algorithm with a fairness of 0.10 means that it is unfair to 90% of the users. Also, the discrimination index can be defined as 1 - fairness index.