Geometric Kernel Diversity: An Axiomatic Diversity Measure in Euclidean Space

Abstract: Quantifying the diversity of a set of objects is a fundamental problem in machine learning and statistics. Mironov and Prokhorenkova (2025) recently showed that three axioms-monotonicity, uniqueness, and continuity-are crucial for a reliable diversity measure and that none of the standard metrics in the literature satisfy all three. They also constructed two measures that do satisfy the axioms, but both are NP-hard to compute, leaving open the question of whether efficient axiomatic diversity measures can exist. We study a Euclidean-restricted version of this question. We introduce Geometric Kernel Diversity (GKD), which associates a radial kernel solid with each point and measures the volume of their union. We show that canonical GKD satisfies all three Mironov-Prokhorenkova axioms on Euclidean-realizable inputs. For canonical GKD, we give exact polynomial-time algorithms in dimensions $d \le 3$. In arbitrary dimensions, we give a randomized algorithm that returns a $(1 \pm \varepsilon)$-approximation with probability at least $1-δ$ in time $$O \left(\frac{nd}{\varepsilon<sup>2}\log\frac{2}δ\right)$$ for $n$ points. The axiomatic guarantee applies to exact canonical GKD; the randomized algorithm approximates this deterministic quantity. We further show that the two diversity measures of Mironov and Prokhorenkova (2025) remain NP-hard on Euclidean-realizable inputs and, unless $\mathrm{NP} = \mathrm{RP}$, admit no FPRAS even on this restricted domain.