scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1234106

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Publication:4221107





The book of J. Robertson and W. Webb is a comprehensive presentation of cake cutting algorithms under different definitions of fairness. This well-readable, consistent book is addressed to beginners, and to experts as well. The underlying subject of algorithms for fair division is founded in the work of Polish mathematicians such as Banach, Knaster and Steinhaus. To a great extent, the framework is game theoretical. The book is subdivided into eleven chapters: Chapter 1: Fairly dividing a cake, 2: Pieces or crumbs -- how many cuts are needed? 3: Unequal shares, 4: The serendipity of disagreement, 5: Some variations of the theme of ``fair division, 6: Some combinatorial observations, 7: Interlude: an inventory of results, 8: Impossibility theorems, 9: Attempting fair division with a limited number of cuts, 10: Exact and envy-free algorithms, 11: A return to division for unequal shares. The first six chapters are written in an illustrative, entertaining and slow manner that exhibits the beauty and richness of the subject, and the underlying ideas as well. For example, the authors talk about ``lakes, swords, moving knives, etc.. So the studied problems become vividly presented without overloading formalism. Chapter 7 gives an overview about the different definitions of ``fairness, of corresponding successful approaches and algorithms together with references and further hints. Finally, the last four chapters are concerned with technical details and with proofs. The book is a comprehensive elaboration of a number of problems of fair division. In a closed form, Robertson and Webb present the state-of-the-art about what is known in ``CCA. Hereby, several new open questions arise, and various relations to probability theory, graph theory, combinatorial theory, complexity theory and number theory are pointed out in the book. ``Excursions into different directions can be made. This work may serve as a base in seminars. Exercises and projects at the end of the chapters, together with solutions at the end of the book, round this valuable contribution into a modern field of applied mathematics.




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