We consider fair division of a set of indivisible goods among n agents with additive valuations using the fairness notion of maximin share (MMS). MMS is the most popular share-based notion, in which an agent finds an allocation fair to her if she receives goods worth at least her (1-out-of-n) MMS value. An allocation is called MMS if all agents receive their MMS values. However, since MMS allocations do not always exist [Kurokawa et al., JACM'18], the focus shifted to investigating its ordinal and multiplicative approximations.

We consider the problem of fairly allocating a set of indivisible goods among n agents with additive valuations, using the popular fairness notion of maximin share (MMS). Since MMS allocations do not always exist, a series of works provided existence and algorithms for approximate MMS allocations. The Garg-Taki algorithm gives the current best approximation factor of (3/4 + 1/12n). Most of these results are based on complicated analyses, especially those providing better than 2/3 factor. Moreover, since no tight example is known of the Garg-Taki algorithm, it is unclear if this is the best factor of this approach. In this paper, we significantly simplify the analysis of this algorithm and also improve the existence guarantee to a factor of (3/4 + min(1/36, 3/(16n-4))). For small n, this provides a noticeable improvement. Furthermore, we present a tight example of this algorithm, showing that this may be the best factor one can hope for with the current techniques.

For the fundamental problem of fairly dividing a set of indivisible items among agents, envy-freeness up to any item (EFX) and maximin fairness (MMS) are arguably the most compelling fairness concepts proposed till now. Unfortunately, despite significant efforts over the past few years, whether EFX allocations always exist is still an enigmatic open problem, let alone their efficient computation. Furthermore, today we know that MMS allocations are not always guaranteed to exist. These facts weaken the usefulness of both EFX and MMS, albeit their appealing conceptual characteristics. We propose two alternative fairness concepts—called epistemic EFX (EEFX) and minimum EFX value fairness (MXS)---inspired by EFX and MMS. For both, we explore their relationships to well-studied fairness notions and, more importantly, prove that EEFX and MXS allocations always exist and can be computed efficiently for additive valuations. Our results justify that the new fairness concepts are excellent alternatives to EFX and MMS.

We study the generalized multidimensional bin packing problem (GVBP) that generalizes both geometric packing and vector packing. Here, we are given n rectangular items where the i-th item has width w(i), height h(i), and d nonnegative weights v₁(i), v₂(i), …, v_d(i). Our goal is to get an axis-parallel non-overlapping packing of the items into square bins so that for all j ∈ [d], the sum of the j-th weight of items in each bin is at most 1. This is a natural problem arising in logistics, resource allocation, and scheduling. Despite being well-studied in practice, approximation algorithms for this problem have rarely been explored. We first obtain two simple algorithms for GVBP having asymptotic approximation ratios 6(d+1) and 3(1 + ln(d+1) + ε). We then extend the Round-and-Approx (R&A) framework [Bansal et al., 2009; Bansal and Khan, 2014] to wider classes of algorithms, and show how it can be adapted to GVBP. Using more sophisticated techniques, we obtain better approximation algorithms for GVBP, and we get further improvement by combining them with the R&A framework. This gives us an asymptotic approximation ratio of 2(1 + ln((d+4)/2)) + ε for GVBP, which improves to 2.919+ε for the special case of d = 1. We obtain further improvement when the items are allowed to be rotated. We also present algorithms for a generalization of GVBP where the items are high dimensional cuboids.

In the Two-dimensional Bin Packing (2BP) problem, we are given a set of rectangles of height and width at most one and our goal is to find an axis-aligned nonoverlapping packing of these rectangles into the minimum number of unit square bins. The problem admits no APTAS and the current best approximation ratio is 1.406 by Bansal and Khan [SODA'14]. A well-studied variant of the problem is Guillotine Two-dimensional Bin Packing (G2BP), where all rectangles must be packed in such a way that every rectangle in the packing can be obtained by recursively applying a sequence of end-to-end axis-parallel cuts, also called guillotine cuts. Bansal, Lodi, and Sviridenko [FOCS'05] obtained an APTAS for this problem. Let λ be the smallest constant such that for every set I of items, the number of bins in the optimal solution to G2BP for I is upper bounded by λ opt(I) + c, where opt(I) is the number of bins in the optimal solution to 2BP for I and c is a constant. It is known that 4/3 ≤ λ ≤ 1.692. Bansal and Khan [SODA'14] conjectured that λ = 4/3. The conjecture, if true, will imply a (4/3+ε)-approximation algorithm for 2BP. According to convention, for a given constant δ > 0, a rectangle is large if both its height and width are at least δ, and otherwise it is called skewed. We make progress towards the conjecture by showing λ = 4/3 for skewed instance, i.e., when all input rectangles are skewed. Even for this case, the previous best upper bound on λ was roughly 1.692. We also give an APTAS for 2BP for skewed instance, though general 2BP does not admit an APTAS.

We explore approximation algorithms for the $d$-dimensional geometric bin packing problem ($d$BP). Caprara (MOR 2008) gave a harmonic-based algorithm for $d$BP having an asymptotic approximation ratio (AAR) of $T_{\infty}^{d-1}$ (where $T_{\infty} \approx 1.691$). However, their algorithm doesn't allow items to be rotated. This is in contrast to some common applications of $d$BP, like packing boxes into shipping containers. We give approximation algorithms for $d$BP when items can be orthogonally rotated about all or a subset of axes. We first give a fast and simple harmonic-based algorithm having AAR $T_{\infty}^{d}$. We next give a more sophisticated harmonic-based algorithm, which we call $\mathtt{HGaP}_k$, having AAR $T_{\infty}^{d-1}(1+ε)$. This gives an AAR of roughly $2.860 + ε$ for 3BP with rotations, which improves upon the best-known AAR of $4.5$. In addition, we study the multiple-choice bin packing problem that generalizes the rotational case. Here we are given $n$ sets of $d$-dimensional cuboidal items and we have to choose exactly one item from each set and then pack the chosen items. Our algorithms also work for the multiple-choice bin packing problem. We also give fast and simple approximation algorithms for the multiple-choice versions of $d$D strip packing and $d$D geometric knapsack.