4 ms·
How a matchmaking algorithm saved lives
- davidw 11y agoPretty powerful stuff. Puts paid to the notion that economics is "not real" or all handwaving, as you sometimes read here.
- lostmsu 11y agoNot sure this particular algorithm has anything to do about economics, except its author is an economist.
- Kalium 11y agoMatchmaking is arguably the core of economics.
- cschmidt 11y agoIt seems to have been often studied by Economists in the area of game theory. This very nice book is by two of them: http://www.amazon.com/Two-Sided-Matching-Game-Theoretic-Econometric-Monographs/dp/0521437881 http://www.amazon.com/Two-Sided-Matching-Game-Theoretic-Econ... To be fair, it is also studied by computer scientists, as in the other main book on the stable marriage: http://www.amazon.com/The-Stable-Marriage-Problem-Foundations/dp/0262515520 http://www.amazon.com/The-Stable-Marriage-Problem-Foundation...
- tamana 11y agomacroeconomics is all handwaving
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- madsushi 11y agoThere's a great EconTalk podcast episode about Matching Markets with Alvin Roth (the Stanford economist mentioned in the article): http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/07/alvin_roth_on_m.html http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/07/alvin_roth_on_m.htm...
- loversinarms 11y agoIsn't the donor-patient problem a vertex cycle cover? Finding a minimum one is NP-complete, how exactly is this one applied? edit: found a bit more information https://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=1474 https://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=1474
- marketforlemmas 11y agoYou are right that the general problem is intractable; a lot of the advances in these match making algorithms come from better heuristics and computing power.
- chrischen 11y agoIs there a patent on this?
- est 11y agoMight be related, but I recently discovered this http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/SocialGolferProblem/ http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/SocialGolferProblem/
- pmiller2 11y agoThat is actually not related, but the beginning of an entirely different field of mathematics. Design theory is the study of mathematical objects called combinatorial designs[1], which are basically fancy ways of partitioning finite sets into subsets with a pre-specified structure. The thing you linked to is a specific instance that shows the existence of designs in a few specific cases. While Kirkman essentially posed the first design theory question in the 1850's, both the authors of one of the standard textbooks[2] in the field are still alive and (IIRC) still working today! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorial_design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorial_design . Incidentally, the field is called "design theory," but it's not a great search term outside of MathSciNet. [2] http://www.amazon.com/Design-Edition-Discrete-Mathematics-Applications/dp/1420082965 http://www.amazon.com/Design-Edition-Discrete-Mathematics-Ap...
- makach 11y agoNPR RadioLab did an amazing story on this! http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/06/11/412224854/how-an-economist-helped-patients-find-the-right-kidney-donor http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/06/11/41222485...
- sudo_bang_bang 11y agoThere's also a great Freakonomics podcast about this story http://freakonomics.com/podcast/make-me-a-match-a-new-freakonomics-radio-episode/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/make-me-a-match-a-new-freako...
- phaedrus441 11y agoAs someone who just certified a residency match list last night, I'm glad this system exists.