I have a set of multisets $S = \{ X_1, \dots, X_K\}$ where $X_i \subset \mathbb{R}$. I need to find an optimal partition $L^*, R^*$ such that this $E(L) + E(R)$ is minimized. Denote $K(X) = \cup_{I \in X} I$, then $E(X) := \sum_{i \in K(X)} |i - \text{median}(K(X))|$, where $|.|$ is the absolute value. $X_i$ might contains duplicated elements and all operations are on multisets; in $K(X)$, $\cup$ is a union of multisets, and in $E(X)$, $\sum$ adds "with repetition" (repeated elements are summed multiple times). I want to prove this problem is hard, but I don't have a very straightforward way to prove it's NP-complete. What I did instead was assuming given extra information, suppose I know the median of both $K(L^*)$ and $K(R^*)$, and then I can show find the optimal partition is an integer linear programming problem, which is NP-complete. Can I conclude the original problem is at least NP-complete?