In the mathematics of

social science Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of so ...

, and especially game theory, a moving-knife procedure is a type of solution to the

fair division Fair division is the problem in game theory of dividing a set of resources among several people who have an entitlement to them so that each person receives their due share. That problem arises in various real-world settings such as division of inh ...

problem. The canonical example is the division of a cake using a

knife A knife ( : knives; from Old Norse 'knife, dirk') is a tool or weapon with a cutting edge or blade, usually attached to a handle or hilt. One of the earliest tools used by humanity, knives appeared at least 2.5 million years ago, as evidence ...

. The simplest example is a moving-knife equivalent of the I cut, you choose scheme, first described by A.K.Austin as a prelude to his own procedure: * One player moves the knife across the cake, conventionally from left to right. * The cake is cut when ''either'' player calls "stop". * If each player calls stop when he or she perceives the knife to be at the 50-50 point, then the first player to call stop will produce an

envy-free Envy-freeness, also known as no-envy, is a criterion for fair division. It says that, when resources are allocated among people with equal rights, each person should receive a share that is, in their eyes, at least as good as the share received by a ...

division if the caller gets the left piece and the other player gets the right piece. (This procedure is not necessarily efficient.) Generalizing this scheme to more than two players cannot be done by a discrete procedure without sacrificing envy-freeness. Examples of moving-knife procedures include * The

Stromquist moving-knives procedure The Stromquist moving-knives procedure is a procedure for envy-free cake-cutting among three players. It is named after Walter Stromquist who presented it in 1980. This procedure was the first envy-free moving knife procedure devised for three pla ...

* The

Austin moving-knife procedures The Austin moving-knife procedures are procedures for equitable division of a cake. They allocate each of ''n'' partners, a piece of the cake which this partner values as ''exactly'' 1/n of the cake. This is in contrast to proportional division pr ...

* The Levmore–Cook moving-knives procedure * The Robertson–Webb rotating-knife procedure * The Dubins–Spanier moving-knife procedure * The Webb moving-knife procedure

References

{{game theory Cake-cutting