Post: #1

Guy made a formula for "wife-swapping" idea which basically involves women having a choice of either their current mate or the man that ranked them the highest out of other potential suitors. The end result is a "stable solution" for mating in a population pool. Seems bizarre that he got a Nobel for this. I'm going to dig up some more info.


http://www.businessinsider.com/this-is-t...cs-2012-10

Post: #2

I can't see an argument against it, especially if it's infinitely iterative.

My question though, is who would jump ship more often, men or women?

Women like to idealize everything and refuse to be personally accountable for their problems, always contributing them to outside factors.

With men, it's a new piece of ass on the horizon.

Post: #3

It's funny, I actually learned this algorithm in a game theory class. It's hard for me to believe this is a big factor in winning the Nobel, given how intuitive, daresay obvious, the algorithm is. It's kind of like how Roissy, say, might be more brilliant than all the evolutionary psychologists working, but because he was merely writing his 'hunches' instead of doing the legwork of research, he wouldn't get nearly the credit that academics would.

For those that didn't click through, the algorithm is 'take a pool of people, and pair up the highest man with the highest woman. Then go on to the next highest man and highest woman, pair them up. Etc., until everyone is paired up. And that is the most stable form of pairing.'

It's an interesting theory, but hardly explanatory of modern pairing practices. In an enclosed social circle where lifelong monogamy is strictly enforced, with an early onset of maturity, I'd say it's approximately true. But in an open environment, with preferences changing over time and fluid relationships and pairings of all kinds, this model is not helpful.

Post: #4

I have nothing against the validity of this model, but isn't this matching algorithm old news? I remember learning this in a Microeconomics class several years ago. We used to make tables with each person's individual preferences and solving them like crosswords. Surely you can't get a Nobel for just slightly tweaking an already existing model.

Post: #5

(10-16-2012 09:42 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  isn't this matching algorithm old news? Surely you can't get a Nobel for just slightly tweaking an already existing model.

It wasn't old news when Shapley published it in 1962.

Post: #6

(10-16-2012 09:42 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  I have nothing against the validity of this model, but isn't this matching algorithm old news? I remember learning this in a Microeconomics class several years ago. We used to make tables with each person's individual preferences and solving them like crosswords. Surely you can't get a Nobel for just slightly tweaking an already existing model.

Nobels are notorious for being awarded several decades after the original finding. And they're not awarded posthumously, so if you make a Nobel worthy finding and croak, you're straight outta luck.

Post: #7

The matching algorithm is a way of generating a stable set of pairs between two groups, so that no two unmatched individuals would rather be with each other than their current mates.

It's important in computer science and mathematics, but unfortunately has little to do with actually making a marriage stable (or for that matter, unstable).

And yeah, it's old news.

However, Roth recently implemented this algorithm to help hospitals pick residents and to assign students to public schools. Therein lies the freshness of their work.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/busine....html?_r=0

http://www.slate.com/articles/business/m...tance.html