Adjacencies on random ordering polytopes and flow polytopes (2207.06925v1)

Abstract: The Multiple Choice Polytope (MCP) is the prediction range of a random utility model due to Block and Marschak (1960). Fishburn (1998) offers a nice survey of the findings on random utility models at the time. A complete characterization of the MCP is a remarkable achievement of Falmagne (1978). Apart for a recognition of the facets by Suck (2002), the geometric structure of the MCP was apparently not much investigated. Recently, Chang, Narita and Saito (2022) refer to the adjacency of vertices while Turansick (2022) uses a condition which we show to be equivalent to the non-adjacency of two vertices. We characterize the adjacency of vertices and the adjacency of facets. To derive a more enlightening proof of Falmagne Theorem and of Suck result, Fiorini (2004) assimilates the MCP with the flow polytope of some acyclic network. Our results on adjacencies also hold for the flow polytope of any acyclic network. In particular, they apply not only to the MCP, but also to three polytopes which Davis-Stober, Doignon, Fiorini, Glineur and Regenwetter (2018) introduced as extended formulations of the weak order polytope, interval order polytope and semiorder polytope (the prediction ranges of other models, see for instance Fishburn and Falmagne, 1989, and Marley and Regenwetter, 2017).