3 ms·

But then you are asking students to collectively act out an algorithm. Why not leave it to a machine?

• maxander 11y ago
  Because the machine can't deduce each student's preferences. I suspect the problem is essentially unsolvable, without requiring each student to fully write out the order of his/her school preferences. Otherwise there will inevitably (if the solution to the Stable Marriage problem is optimal in this regard) be undecidable cases that would have to be dealt with in a second round.
• e12e 11y ago
  We could assume that each student has as close to perfect knowledge about his/her preferences as is attainable. The student will have to work to communicate that to the system one way or another -- I'm suggesting that using several rounds might mean less work (and/or less unpleasant work) for the students, than if they have to fill out an impossible number of choices/preferences upfront -- just so the system have the data it needs to complete in one round. Which would be optimizing the wrong part of the problem (or even the wrong problem). No matter how interesting the problem might be from an algorithmic point of view.