Computing optimal k-regret minimizing sets with top-k depth contours

Regret minimizing sets are a very recent approach to representing a dataset D with a small subset S of representative tuples. The set S is chosen such that executing any top-1 query on S rather than D is minimally perceptible to any user. To discover an optimal regret minimizing set of a predetermined cardinality is conjectured to be a hard problem. In this paper, we generalize the problem to that of finding an optimal k-regret minimizing set, wherein the difference is computed over top-k queries, rather than top-1 queries. We adapt known geometric ideas of top-k depth contours and the reverse top-k problem. We show that the depth contours themselves offer a means of comparing the optimality of regret minimizing sets with L2 distance. We design an O(cn) plane sweep algorithm for two dimensions to compute an optimal regret minimizing set of cardinality c. For higher dimensions, we introduce a greedy algorithm that progresses towards increasingly optimal solutions by exploiting the transitivity of L2 distance.