Voronoi Games on the Discrete Hypercube: Four-Player Equilibria

TL;DR

We study a four-player Voronoi game on the discrete hypercube $Q_n$, where voters at every vertex vote for the nearest player under Hamming distance. The main result is a complete characterization: a profile of four players is an equilibrium if and only if it is balanced, meaning that in every coordinate two players choose $0$ and two choose $1$. The proof shows balanced profiles yield equal scores $1/4$ for all players and any unilateral move cannot do better, while any non-balanced profile allows a balancing move that strictly improves a player's score, forcing equilibrium to be balanced. This resolves a conjecture of Day and Johnson for four players and points toward the more challenging $k\ge 5$ case, with potential extensions to non-uniform voter distributions on $Q_n$.

Abstract

We consider a four-player game on the discrete hypercube $Q_n = \{0,1\}^n$, where each of the four players has chosen a single vertex of the hypercube. Such a position is called a profile. Imagine there is a voter at every vertex, and each voter gives their vote to whichever player is closest to them, in terms of Hamming distance. If multiple players are tied for this smallest distance, the vote is divided equally between them. The score of a player is the total number of votes they get. (This has a natural interpretation in terms of voting theory: imagine there are $n$ binary issues and that voters are uniformly distributed in their positions on these issues, and view the players as political candidates competing for vote share.) We say that a profile is an equilibrium if no player can strictly increase their score by moving to a different vertex, while the other players maintain their original positions. Moreover, a profile is balanced if, in each of the $n$ coordinates, two players have chosen 0, and two players have chosen 1. We prove that a four-player profile is an equilibrium if and only if it is balanced, proving a conjecture of Day and Johnson.

Theorems & Definitions (14)

• Conjecture 1.1
• Theorem 1.2
• Theorem 2.1
• Lemma 2.2
• proof
• Lemma 2.3
• proof
• proof : Proof of Lemma \ref{['lem1:main']}.
• proof : Proof of Theorem \ref{['thm1:main']}.
• Theorem 3.1