Duke switches to random roommate matching

Is it a good idea to allow college students to choose their own roommates?  Duke University returns to administrative matching of first year roommates, with Dean Random making the match.

Inside Higher Ed has the story (and the url makes for an informative headline: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/03/02/duke-university-blocks-students-picking-their-roommates-freshman-year 

Here's the actual (pithier) headline and subhead
Random Roommates Only
"Duke University takes away from first-year students the ability to pick their roommates. This move goes against recent trends -- and raises questions about diversity, tolerance and the college experience."

"Duke University has removed from students what has become one of the most significant aspects of matriculation at many colleges: picking a first-year roommate

"Beginning with the Class of 2022, the roommate-selection process will be entirely governed by the university, with assignments largely made at random -- a shift, officials said, meant to stem the recent movement of students self-selecting peers with similar perspectives and backgrounds to their own, fueled by social media connections made before arriving on campus."

Roommate matching and the social internet

Roommate matching continues to evolve, with Facebook playing a key role: Students Turn to Online Roommate Matching Services to Avoid Getting Paired With a Stranger (HT: Mike Ruberry)

The Chronicle gives a good description: Colleges Use Facebook to Let Freshmen Find Their Own Roommates
"This summer, incoming freshmen at five universities can use a Facebook application to find their roommates. Students can use the application, RoomBug, to fill out forms about their preferences for living and qualities they'd like to see in a roommate. Students can then request a match, which the other incoming freshman must confirm.
RoomBug is hardly the first service to let students match themselves: Tulane University announced a partnership with online service RoommateClick two years ago.
But RoomBug, which the company U-Match LLC just rolled out at Emory University, the University of Florida, Temple University, Wichita State University, and William Paterson University of New Jersey, tries to go where the students are.
"Everyone is on Facebook," says Robert Castellucci, the service's co-founder and sales director.
Over a quarter of the University of Florida's incoming freshmen have added the Facebook application, he says, but numbers on how many matches the service helped make are not yet available."

Maureen Dowd regrets the trend, writing in her NY Times column
"The serendipity of ending up with roommates that you like, despite your differences, or can’t stand, despite your similarities, or grow to like, despite your reservations, is an experience that toughens you up and broadens you out for the rest of life.

"So I was dubious when I read in The Wall Street Journal last week that students are relying more on online roommate matching services to avoid getting paired with strangers or peers with different political views, study habits and messiness quotients."

Matchmaking at Harvard, the roommate problem

The Crimson reports, In Choosing Roommates, Deans Become Matchmakers.

"The day is June 10, and Resident Dean of Freshmen Sue Brown embarks upon what will be a five-week quest: sorting 398 first-years into rooms in Grays, Matthews, and Weld Halls.


"Much of this task remains the same as it has been in years past. She sorts freshmen largely by hand, thoroughly reading incoming freshmen’s responses to roommate questionnaires. During the process, her floor is covered with a mass of paper that is eventually divided into nine distinct piles—one of the early steps in the lengthy matchmaking process.

"But in the midst of that process, technology rears its head. In Adobe Acrobat, Brown categorizes freshmen, using colors to sort the incoming students by geography and stamping the freshmen’s rooming surveys with various logos made in Photoshop. A cartoon of a chess piece marks a chess player. A compass is reserved for the “curious and adventurous” freshman, Brown says.

"Emblazoned with colors and cartoons, the surveys are printed out and scattered on a floor in Brown’s residence in Weld Hall. From there, she divides the students into three categories based on students’ self-reported levels of sociability.

"Social tendencies are one of the most important factors in determining roommate compatibility “because it’s going to be something that comes between roommates before they even meet each other,” she says.

"But other factors matter as well, Brown adds. From the sleeping habits freshmen keep and the sports they play, to the neatness they maintain and the number of roommates they want, the resident deans take into account a slew of determinants of each first-year’s personality.

"Some factors, like musical tastes, are often stronger predictors of compatibility than others, according to Brown.
...
"Resident deans often try to place local freshmen with those from outside the area, especially international students for whom going home during vacations is more difficult, according to Dean of Freshmen Thomas A. Dingman ’67.
...
"Every year, a small margin of freshmen—”about half a dozen”—are switched out of their original suites after approaching the FDO, Dingman says. Many more choose to block with and live with others in future years.

...
"After organizing the rooms, the deans turn to assembling the entryways.
“You want it to be a dIverse group, a microcosm of the freshman class,” Brown says.
But at the same time, the entryway can’t be so diverse that a student feels isolated. For example, the FDO tries to avoid placing only one international student in any entryway, Brown says. She also avoids putting two students from the same varsity sport or the same high school in a single entryway."

Roommate matching

"Male or female? Smoker or nonsmoker?
Those two questions have long been the basis for the University of Arizona’s roommate-pairing formula. But a year ago the university decided to give incoming students seeking deeper compatibility another option: shopping for their roommates on the Web."


That's the first paragraph of an interesting story at Inside Higher Ed about using the web to improve roommate matching: Match at First Site .


"Arizona is one of a small but growing number of colleges that have contracted with RoommateClick, a service that lets students take the lead on a task that has historically fallen to campus housing officials by browsing and communicating with future classmates who have also signed up for the service. Students who have hit it off online can then request to bunk with each other."


For a different market, see my earlier post Housemate match .

Nesterly: matching student tenants to empty-nesters

Helping Boomers Find Millennial Roommates
LINDA POON  JUL 1, 2017
In a college town, students and older homeowners have a lot to offer each other. That’s why two urban planners built an app to bring them together.
********

Here's the app: Nesterly.
"On any given night, more than 50 million bedrooms sit empty across the U.S. Many of these spare rooms belong to older homeowners whose large houses have become a burden as they age. At the same time, millions of young renters struggle to afford the high prices in areas near schools and jobs. nesterly targets both of these issues by connecting older people with extra rooms to those seeking affordable rents through unique task-housing arrangements. Renters can now pay part of their rent by helping around the house, and owners gain stability, security, and support to stay in their homes."

MATCH-UP 2022, August 24-26, 2022, TU Vienna, Vienna, Austria

 MATCH-UP 2022, August 24-26, 2022, TU Vienna, Vienna, Austria

registration for the workshop is only possible until August 16, 23:59 CET: https://www.eventbrite.at/e/match-up-2022-the-6th-workshop-on-preferences-under-matching-registration-368493533077

Here's the program:

24.08. Wednesday

13:30–14:15		Registration
14:15–14:30		Opening remarks
14:30–14:55	Estelle Cantillon, Li Chen and Juan Pereyra	Respecting priorities versus respecting preferences in school choice: When is there a trade-off?
14:55–15:20	Lars Ehlers	Student-Optimal Interdistrict School Choice: District-Based versus School-Based Admissions
15:20–15:45	Bnaya Dreyfuss, Ofer Glicksohn, Ori Heffetz and Assaf Romm	Incorporating Reference-Dependence Considerations in Deferred Acceptance
15:45–16:15		Coffee break
16:30–16:55	Xuan Zhang and Yuri Faenza	Affinely representable lattices, stable matchings, and choice functions
16:55–17:20	Kemal Yildiz and Ahmet Alkan	Modular stable matching mechanisms
17:20–17:45	Peter Biro and Gergely Csáji	Strong core and Pareto-optimal solutions for the multiple partners matching problem under lexicographic preferences
17:30–19:30		Poster session

25.08. Thursday

9:00–9:25	Niclas Boehmer, Klaus Heeger and Stanisław Szufa	A Map of Diverse Synthetic Stable Roommates Instances
9:25–9:50	Klaus Heeger and Ágnes Cseh	Popular matchings with weighted voters
9:50–10:15	Inbal Rozenzweig, Reshef Meir and Nicholas Mattei	Mitigating Skewed Bidding for Conference Paper Matching
10:15–10:40	Sai Srivatsa Ravindranath, Zhe Feng, Shira Li, Jonathan Ma, Scott Kominers and David Parkes	Deep Learning for Two-Sided Matching
10:40–11:10		Coffee break
11:10–11:35	Yannai Gonczarowski, Ori Heffetz and Clayton Thomas	Self-Explanatory Strategyproof Mechanisms
11:35–12:00	Assaf Romm, Alvin Roth and Ran Shorrer	Stability vs. No Justified Envy
12:00–12:25	Rupert Freeman, Geoffrey Pritchard and Mark Wilson	Order Symmetry: A New Fairness Criterion for Assignment Mechanisms
12:25–14:00		Lunch break
14:00–15:00	Keynote: Vijay Vazirani Note: Different from the other talks, will be held in Hörsaal 1 (lecture hall 1).	Online Bipartite Matching and Adwords
15:00–15:25	Danny Blom, Bart Smeulders and Frits Spieksma	Rejection-proof Kidney Exchange Mechanisms
15:25–15:50	Peter Biro, Flip Klijn, Xenia Klimentova and Ana Viana	Shapley-Scarf Housing Markets: Respecting Improvement, Integer Programming, and Kidney Exchange
15:50–16:30		Coffee break
16:15–16:40	Josue Ortega and Thilo Klein	Improving Efficiency and Equality in School Choice
16:40–17:05	Ran Shorrer and Sandor Sovago	Dominated Choices in a Strategically Simple College
17:05–17:30	Daniel Kornbluth and Alexey Kushnir	Undergraduate Course Allocation through Pseudo-Markets
17:30–18:00		Group photo in front of the main university building (Karslplatz)
18:30–22:00		Bus ride to and dinner at Heuriger

26.08. Friday

9:00–10:00	Keynote: Sophie Bade Held in Hörsaal 8 (lecture hall 8).	TBA
10:00–10:25	Nick Arnosti, Carlos Bonet and Jay Sethuraman	A Systematic Approach to Selection Problems
10:25–10:50	Di Feng, Bettina Klaus and Flip Klijn	A Characterization of the Coordinate-Wise Top-Trading-Cycles Mechanism for Multiple-Type Housing Markets
10:50–11:20		Coffee break
11:20–11:45	Haris Aziz and Zhaohong Sun	Multi-Rank Smart Reserves
12:45–12:10	Jean-Jacques Herings and Yu Zhou	Equilibria in Matching Markets with Soft and Hard Liquidity Constraints
12:10–13:45		Lunch break
13:45–14:10	Karolina Vocke	Anonymity and stability in large many-to-many markets
14:10–14:35	Kristóf Bérczi, Erika Renáta Bérczi-Kovács and Evelin Szögi	A dual approach for dynamic pricing in multi-demand markets
14:35–15:00	Georgy Artemov, Yeon-Koo Che and Yinghua He	Stable Matching with Mistaken Agents
15:00–15:25	Federico Bobbio, Margarida Carvalho, Andrea Lodi, Ignacio Rios and Alfredo Torrico	Capacity Planning in Stable Matching: An Application to School Choice
15:25–16:00		Coffee break
16:00–16:25	Haris Aziz, Anton Baychkov and Peter Biro	Cutoff stability under distributional constraints with an application to summer internship matching
16:25–16:50	Kenzo Imamura and Yasushi Kawase	Efficient matching under general constraints
16:50–17:15	Zheng Chen, Bo Li, Mingming Li and Guochuan Zhang	Fair Graphical Resource Allocation with Matching-Induced Utilities
17:15–17:40	Bo Li, Fangxiao Wang and Yu Zhou	Maximin Share Fair Allocation of Indivisible Chores: Beyond Additive Valuations
17:40		Closing remarks

Match-Up 2019 conference in Switzerland, May 2019. Call for papers

Bettina Klaus points me towards this call for papers, for the latest in a series of conferences on matching. (I had the good fortune to attend the first and the fourth of these, in 2008 and 2017.)

MATCH-UP 2019: the Fifth International Workshop on Matching Under Preferences

May 26th-29th 2019
Congressi Stefano Franscini,
Monte Verità, Ascona, Switzerland
http://www.optimalmatching.com/MATCHUP2019/ (please subscribe to our mailing list there)
contact e-mail (Bettina Klaus): frontiers.marketdesign@gmail.com

(each participant will pay a fee covering direct costs of meals, coffee breaks, and an excursion, based on actual costs, of about 400 CHF)

MATCH-UP 2019 is the fifth workshop in the series of interdisciplinary and international workshops on matching under preferences.  The first in the series took place in Reykjavik in 2008, the second took place in
Budapest in 2012, the third in Glasgow in 2015, and the fourth in Boston in 2017.

Background:

Matching problems with preferences occur in widespread applications such as the assignment of school-leavers to universities, junior doctors to
hospitals, students to campus housing, children to schools, kidney
transplant patients to donors and so on. The common thread is that
individuals have preference lists over the possible outcomes and the task
is to find a matching of the participants that is in some sense optimal
with respect to these preferences.

The remit of this workshop is to explore matching problems with
preferences from the perspective of algorithms and complexity, discrete
mathematics, combinatorial optimization, game theory, mechanism design and economics, and thus a key objective is to bring together the research communities of the related areas.

List of topics:

The matching problems under consideration include, but are not limited to:
* two-sided matchings involving agents on both sides (e.g. college
  admissions, resident allocation, job markets, school choice, etc.)
* two-sided matchings involving agents and items (e.g. house allocation,
  course allocation, project allocation, assigning papers to reviewers,
  school choice, etc.)
* one-sided matchings (roommates problem, kidney exchanges, etc.)
* matching with payments (assignment game, etc.)

Invited speakers:
* Péter Biró, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
* Flip Klijn, Institute for Economic Analysis (IAE-CSIC), Barcelona, Spain
* Bahar Rastegari, University of Southampton, UK
* Ildi Schlotter, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary

MATCH-UP 2019 Submissions, Easychair Paper Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=matchup2019

We call for original papers that have not previously been published in (or accepted to appear in) a conference proceedings or a journal. Papers can however be under review for a conference or journal elsewhere at the time of submission.
There is no page limit for submissions. The submission should contain within the first 12 pages a clear presentation of the merits of the paper, including a discussion of the paper's importance within the context of prior work and a description of the key technical and conceptual ideas used to achieve its main claims. Proofs that can enable the main mathematical claims of the paper to be verified must be provided. Material other than the first 12 pages will be read at the committee's discretion.
Only abstracts of accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings. This should allow the simultaneous or subsequent submission of contributed papers to other workshops, conferences or journals. If authors so choose, they may include a link to the full version of their paper (if published, e.g., on arXiv, REpeC, SSRN or on a personal web page) in the proceedings.

MATCH-UP 2019 Important dates:

• Paper submission deadline: 15 January 2019
• Notification: 22 February 2019
• Final version for proceedings: 15 March 2019
• Poster abstract submission deadline: 1 April 2019
• Workshop: Sunday 26 May (starting at 1400) to Wednesday 29 May (ending at 1830) with an excursion in the afternoon of Tuesday 28 May

MATCH-UP 2019 Organizing Committee:

• Péter Biró, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
• Tamás Fleiner,  Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary (CS Program Chair)
• Bettina Klaus, University of Lausanne, Switzerland (Chair)
• David Manlove, University of Glasgow, UK
• Marek Pycia, University of Zürich, Switzerland (ECON Program Chair)

MATCH-UP Steering Committee:

• Péter Biró, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary
• Brian Dean, Clemson University, USA
• Bettina Klaus, University of Lausanne, Switzerland
• David Manlove, University of Glasgow, UK

Further information:

Web: http://www.optimalmatching.com/MATCHUP2019/

Matching in Budapest in July: call for papers

First announcement and call for papers (with apologies if you receive this

more than once):

                           MATCH-UP 2012:

   the Second International Workshop on Matching Under Preferences

                          19-20 July 2012

                         Budapest, Hungary

        http://econ.core.hu/english/res/MATCH-UP_2012.html

  co-located with SING8: The 8th Spain-Italy-Netherlands Meeting

              on Game Theory (http://sing8.iehas.hu)

    

   

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the seminal paper by Gale and Shapley,

and following the success of the first MATCH-UP workshop in Reykjavík in

2008 (http://www.optimalmatching.com/workshop), we are organising another

interdisciplinary workshop on stable matchings and related topics.

Background

----------

Matching problems with preferences occur in widespread applications such

as the assignment of school-leavers to universities, junior doctors to

hospitals, students to campus housing, children to schools, kidney

transplant patients to donors and so on. The common thread is that

individuals have preference lists over the possible outcomes and the task

is to find a matching of the participants that is in some sense optimal

with respect to these preferences.

The remit of this workshop is to explore matching problems with

preferences from the perspective of algorithms and complexity, discrete

mathematics, combinatorial optimization, game theory, mechanism design

and economics, and thus a key objective is to bring together the research

communities of the related areas.

Invited speakers

----------------

* Nicole Immorlica, Northwestern University

* Rob Irving, University of Glasgow

* Fuhito Kojima, Stanford University (on leave at Columbia University)

* Tayfun Sönmez, Boston College

List of topics

--------------

The matching problems under consideration include, but are not limited to:

* two-sided matchings involving agents on both sides (e.g. college

  admissions, resident allocation, job markets, school choice, etc.)

* two-sided matchings involving agents and items (e.g. house allocation,

  course allocation, project allocation, assigning papers to reviewers,

  school choice, etc.)

* one-sided matchings (roommates problem, kidney exchanges, etc.)

* matching with payments (assignment game, auctions, etc.)

Submissions

-----------

We call for two types of contributed papers.

Format A: original contribution

* at most 12 pages

* accepted papers will be published in proceedings (however, this should

  not prevent the simultaneous or subsequent submission of contributed

  papers to other workshops, conferences or journals)

Format B: not necessarily original work

* no page limit

* only the abstract will be published in proceedings

Authors should indicate which format type their paper should be considered

under.

Important dates

---------------

* Deadline for submission of contributed papers: 19 March 2012

* Notification of acceptance: 20 April 2012

* Early registration deadline: 18 May 2012

* Workshop: 19-20 July 2012

Organising committee

--------------------

* Péter Biró (Institute of Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

* Tamás Fleiner (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

* David Manlove (University of Glasgow)

* Tamás Solymosi (Corvinus University, Budapest)

Programme committee

-------------------

* Péter Biró (Chair, Institute of Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

* Estelle Cantillon (Université Libre de Bruxelles)

* Katarína Cechlárová (Univerzita Pavla Jozefa Safárika)

* Paul Dütting (EPFL, Lausanne)

* Aytek Erdil (University of Cambridge)

* Tamás Fleiner (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

* Guillaume Haeringer (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona)

* Elena Inarra (University of the Basque Country)

* Zoltán Király (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)

* Flip Klijn (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona)

* David Manlove (University of Glasgow)

* Eric McDermid (21st Century Technologies)

* Shuichi Miyazaki(Kyoto University)

* Marina Nunez (Universitat de Barcelona)

* Ildikó Schlotter (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

* Tamás Solymosi (Corvinus University, Budapest)

Further information

-------------------

See http://econ.core.hu/english/res/MATCH-UP_2012.html

Matching Conference in Glasgow, April 16-17 2015: call for papers

MATCH-UP 2015 3rd International Workshop on Matching Under Preferences University of Glasgow, 16-17 April 2015 Home Committees Submissions Programme Registration Practical information MATCH-UP 2015 is the third workshop in the series of interdisciplinary and international workshops on matching under preferences. It is co-located, and is partially overlapped with, theCOST Action IC1205 meeting on Matching and Fair Division that takes place on 14-16 April 2015. Previous workshops The first MATCH-UP was held on 6 July 2008 at Reykjavík University as a satellite workshop ofICALP 2008. MATCH-UP 2012, second in this series, was held on 19-20 July 2012 at Corvinus University of Budapest. Background Matching problems with preferences occur in widespread applications such as the assignment of school-leavers to universities, junior doctors to hospitals, students to campus housing, children to schools, kidney transplant patients to donors and so on. The common thread is that individuals have preference lists over the possible outcomes and the task is to find a matching of the participants that is in some sense optimal with respect to these preferences. The remit of this workshop is to explore matching problems with preferences from the perspective of algorithms and complexity, discrete mathematics, combinatorial optimization, game theory, mechanism design and economics, and thus a key objective is to bring together the research communities of the related areas. List of topics The matching problems under consideration include, but are not limited to: two-sided matchings involving agents on both sides (e.g. college admissions, resident allocation, job markets, school choice, etc.) two-sided matchings involving agents and items (e.g. house allocation, course allocation, project allocation, assigning papers to reviewers, school choice, etc. one-sided matchings (roommates problem, kidney exchanges, etc.) matching with payments (assignment game, etc.) Invited speakers Katarína Cechlárová Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice Christine Cheng University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Hervé Moulin University of Glasgow Submissions We call for two types of contributed papers. Format A original contribution at most 12 pages accepted papers will be published in proceedings Format B not necessarily original work no page limit only the abstract will be published in proceedings See Submissions for more information. Important dates Deadline for submission of contributed papers: 1 Dec 2014 Notification of acceptance: 16 Jan 2015 Final versions of papers and abstracts for the proceedings: 16 Feb 2015 Early registration deadline: 2 March 2015 Workshop: 16-17 April 2015 Funding There are a limited number of assisted places, funded by SICSA, that will be awarded to PhD students at SICSA universities. These assisted places will cover the cost of registration but will not cover travel or accommodation. Contact us If you require further information, please use the following email address for all enquiries regarding the workshop: matchup2015@dcs.gla.ac.uk. Sponsorship We gratefully acknowledge financial support from SICSA (The Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance).

Match-Up 2019 in Switzerland, May 26-29

Here's the program. (It contains abstracts following the schedule...)

Sunday, May 26th
14:00 - 14:15    Conference Opening (Bettina Klaus)
14:15 - 14:40“Stability Against Robust Deviations in the Roommate Problem”Daisuke Hirata, Yusuke Kasuya, andKentaro Tomoeda
14:40 - 15:05“Robust   Group   Strategy-Proofness”Steven   KivinenandNorovsambuu Tumennasan
15:05 - 15:30“Robust Design in Monotonic Matching Markets: A Case for Firm-Proposing Deferred-Acceptance”Lars Ehlersand Jordi Masso
15:30-16:00Coffee Break
16:00 - 17:20    Poster Presentation Session 1
“Preprocessing  in  Matching  Problems”  Maxence  Delorme,  Ser-gio  Garc`ıa,  Jacek  Gondzio,  Joerg  Kalcsics,  David  Manlove,  andWilliam Pettersson
“Legal  Assignments,  the  EADAM  (Efficiency  Adjusted  DeferredAcceptance   Mechanism)   Algorithm”   Yuri   Faenza   andXuanZhang
“A General Framework for Stable Roommate Problems: A Preliminary Report”Muge Fidan and Esra Erdem
“Preference Manipulation in Two-Sided Matching - Strategic Behavior and Robustness of Solution Algorithms” Christian Haas
“Practical Issues in Matching - A Case Study on Genetic Counseling Admissions in North America” Jonah Peranson
“Unpopularity Factor in the Marriage and Roommates Problems”Suthee Ruangwises and Toshiya Itoh
“School choice with priority levels:  Constrained Efficient and FairAssignment” Thomas Wouters

Monday,May 27

09:10 CSF Welcome Address

09:25 - 10:10    Invited  Talk“Parameterizing  Stable  Matching  Problems” Ildi Schlotter

10:10 - 10:35“Stable   Noncrossing   Matchings” Suthee   Ruangwises and Toshiya Itoh

10:35 - 11:05    Coffee Break

11:05 - 11:30 “Refugee Resettlement” David Delacretaz, Scott Duke Kominers, and Alexander Teytelboym

11:30 - 11:55 “Matching Problem of Civil Service”Ashutosh Thakur

11:55 - 12:20 “Trading  Networks  with  General  Preferences” Jan  Christoph Schlegel

12:20 - 13:45    Lunch

13:45 - 14:30    Invited Talk “International Kidney Exchange Programmes:  Op-timisation and Games”Peter Biro

14:30 - 14:55 “Pareto Optimal Coalitions of Fixed Size” ́Agnes Cseh,  Tam ́as Fleiner, and Petra Harjan 

14:55 - 15:20 “Balanced Stable Marriage:  How Close is Close Enough?” Sushmita Gupta, Sanjukta Roy, Saket Saurabh, and Meirav Zehavi

15:20 - 15:50    Coffee Break

15:50 - 16:15“Flexibility in House Allocation and Housing Markets” Madhav Raghavan

16:15 - 16:40 “Endowment Manipulations in Probabilistic Assignment Problem”Yuki Tamura

16:40 - 17:05“Equivalent   Choice   Functions   and   Stable   Mechanisms” Jan Christoph Schlegel

17:05 - 17:15    Short Break (no coffee)

17:15 - 17:40 “Centralized  Matching  with  Incomplete  Information” Marcelo Ariel Fernandezand Leeat Yariv

17:40 - 18:05“Simultaneous  Search:   Beyond  Independent  Successes” Ran  I.Shorrer

18:05 - 18:30 “Deferred Acceptance and Regret-free Truth-telling:  A Character-ization Result” Marcelo Ariel Fernandez

 Tuesday, May 28

09:00 - 09:45    Invited  Talk “Balanced  Exchange  in  a  Multi-Object  Shapley-Scarf Market” P ́eter Biro,Flip Klijn, and Szilvia Papai

09:45 - 10:10 “Competing for Priorities in School Choice” Greg Leo and MartinVan der Linden

10:10 - 10:35 “Information  Acquisition  Costs  in  Matching  Markets”  Nicole  S. Immorlica, Jacob D. Leshno, and Irene Y. Lo

10:35 - 11:05    Coffee Break

11:05 - 11:30 “Efficient and (Pretty) Fair Course Assignment with Quotas” Martin  Bichler,  Alexander  Hammerl,  Thayer  Morrill,  and StefanWaldherr

11:30 - 11:55 “An Algorithm for Strong Stability in the Student-Project Alloca-tion Problem with Ties” Sofiat Olaosebikan and David Manlove

11:55 - 12:20“Strategy-Proof  Approximation  Algorithms  for  the  Stable  Mar-riage  Problem  with  Ties  and  Incomplete  Lists”,  Koki  Hamada, Shuichi Miyazaki, and Hiroki Yanagisawa

Wednesday, May 29th

09:00 - 09:45    Invited  Talk “Efficient  and  Incentive-Compatible  Liver  Ex-change” Haluk Ergin, Tayfun Sonmez, andM. Utku Unver

09:45 - 10:10 “Matching  for  the  Israeli  “Mechinot”  Gap-Year  Programs:  Handling Rich Diversity Requirements” Yannai A. Gonczarowski, Lior Kovalio, Noam Nisan, and Assaf Romm

10:10 - 10:35 “Recourse in Kidney Exchange Programs” Valentin Bartier, Yves Crama, Bart Smeulders, and Frits C.R. Spieksma

10:35 - 11:05    Coffee Break

11:05 - 11:30 “Obvious Dominance and Random Priority” Marek Pycia and Peter Troyan

11:30 - 11:55 “Subgame Perfect Equilibria under the Deferred Acceptance Algo-rithm” Keisuke Bando andYasushi Kawase

11:55 - 12:20 “Optimizing Reserves in School Choice:  A Dynamic ProgrammingApproach” Franklyn  Wang,  Ravi  Jagadeesan,  and  Scott  Duke Kominers

12:20 - 13:45    Lunch

13:45 - 14:10 “Strategy-proof,  Envy-free  and  Pareto  Efficient  Online  Mecha-nisms for Fair Division with Additive Valuations” Martin Aleksandrov and Toby Walsh

14:10 - 14:35 “An Alternative Approach to Asylum Assignment” Gian Caspari

14:35 - 15:00 “Matching  with  Myopic  and  Farsighted  Players” Jean-Jacques Herings, Ana Mauleon, and Vincent Vannetelbosch

15:00 - 15:30    Coffee Break

15:30 - 16:15    Invited Talk “Pareto Optimal Allocation under Uncertain Pref-erences” Haris Aziz,  Peter Bir ́o,  Ronald de Haan,  and Baharak Rastegari

16:15 - 16:40    CSF Award and Algorithms Award

16:40 - 18:00    Poster Presentation Session 2A

ll papers as in Poster Presentation Session 1 (except for Jonah Peranson and Christian Haas).

19:00Dinner

Algorithmics Of Matching Under Preferences by David Manlove

A new book on matching, from a computer science perspective:

Algorithmics Of Matching Under Preferences

Manlove, D. (2013) Algorithmics Of Matching Under Preferences. Series: Theoretical Computer Science . World Scientific Publishing. ISBN 9789814425247

Publisher's URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/pdf/10.1142/9789814425254_fmatter

Abstract

A new book by Dr David Manlove of the School of Computing Science has recently been published by World Scientific as part of their Series on Theoretical Computer Science. This book, called “Algorithmics of Matching Under Preferences”, deals with algorithms and complexity issues surrounding the matching of agents to one another when preferences are involved. For example, in several countries, centralised matching schemes handle the annual allocation of intending junior doctors to hospitals based on their preferences over one another. Efficient algorithms required to solve the underlying theoretical matching problems. Similar examples arise in the allocation of pupils to schools, students to projects, kidney patients to donors, and so on. The book surveys algorithmic results for a range of matching problems involving preferences, with practical applications areas including those mentioned above. It covers the classical Stable Marriage, Hospitals/Residents and Stable Roommates problems, where so-called stable matchings are sought, thereby providing an update to “The Stable Marriage problem, Structure and Algorithms”, by Dan Gusfield and Rob Irving, published by MIT Press in 1989. It also extends the coverage to the House Allocation problem, where stability is no longer the key requirement for a matching, and other definitions of optimality hold. This book builds on the author’s prior research in this area, and also his practical experience of developing, with colleagues including Rob Irving and Gregg O’Malley, algorithms for matching kidney patients to donors in the UK (collaborating with NHS Blood and Transplant), for assigning medical students to hospitals in Scotland (in collaboration with NHS Education for Scotland), and for allocating students to elective courses and projects (within the Schools of Medicine and Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, respectively). The book is also timely, as the research area recently came to the forefront in 2012 following the award of the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences to Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley, two leading contributors to the field of matching theory and its application in practical settings, whose work is described in detail throughout the book. A Foreword is contributed by Kurt Mehlhorn of Max-Planck Institut fur Informatik, Saarbrucken, who wrote: “This book covers the research area in its full breadth and beauty. Written by one of the foremost experts in the area, it is a timely update to “The Stable Marriage Problem: Structure and Algorithms” (D. Gusfield and R.W. Irving, 1989). This book will be required reading for anybody working on the subject; it has a good chance of becoming a classic.”

Judd Kessler on the roommate problem in 2002

In response to my recent posts on roommate matching for college students, Judd Kessler points me to a newspaper column he wrote in 2002, on roommates, peer effects, and the Harvard housing system: More Than A Bunkmate.

The roommate problem on TV

James Boudreau writes to alert us to some matching theory on television:

"The NBC show ``Community'' chronicles the misadventures of a diverse and wacky group of students at a community college.  On the last night's episode (season 3, episode three, ``Competitive Ecology'') the group was confronted with the problem of dividing into pairs for the purpose of being lab partners.  When their initial pairings don't work out, one member of the group realizes that they are in a classic roommates problem and suggests that they re-match by writing down lists of ordinal preferences and submitting them to one member of the group who is unanimously selected  as the matchmaker.  Unfortunately, the algorithm that the matchmaker uses (which focuses on balancing popularity across the pairs) proves to be unstable--eventually the group is forced to share one set of equipment since they can not agree on pairings.

"The episode is currently available for free on Hulu.  The most relevant scene begins at about 8:20.  Later on, around 14:33, one member of the group even accuses others of strategically manipulating their preferences to suggest that he is unpopular. "

Summer School on Matching Problems, Markets, and Mechanisms: going on now in Budapest

Summer School on Matching Problems, Markets, and Mechanisms:

(And don't miss the link to ruin pubs at the bottom...)

the first summer school of the COST project on Computational Social Choice

Monday, 24 June 2013

8:00-8:45 Registration

8:45-9:00 Opening

9:00-10:30 First tutorial of David Manlove

Hospitals / Residents problem and its variants

10:30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:30 First tutorial of Tamás Fleiner

Two-sided problems with choice functions, matroids and lattices

12:30-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:30 First tutorial of Atila Abdulkadiroglu

School choice - Theory

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-17:30 Invited talk 1

Marina Nunez: Introduction to assignment games

18:30-21:30 Poster session with welcome reception

In the main building of Corvinus University of Budapest. Address: Budapest, Fővám tér 8., main hall. 33 posters will be presented.

Tuesday, 25 June 2013

9:00-10:30 Second tutorial of Tamás Fleiner

Generalised stable roommates problems

10:30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:30 Second tutorial of Atila Abdulkadiroglu

Market design and recent issues in school choice

12:30-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:30 Second tutorial of David Manlove

The House Allocation problem (with applications to reviewer assignment)

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-17:30 Invited talk 2

Tamás Solymosi: The nucleolus and other core allocations in assignment games

Wednesday, 26 June 2013

9:00-10:30 Third tutorial of Atila Abdulkadiroglu

From design to evaluation to redesign

10:30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:30 Third tutorial of David Manlove

Kidney exchange

12:30-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:30 Third tutorial of Tamás Fleiner

Stable allocations and flows

16:00-18:00 Facultative social program

Hiking to the Citadella (top of Gellért hill), or going to Gellért bath. Meeting after at 18:00 at the fountain in front of hotel Gellért.

18:30- Conference dinner

Buffet dinner at Trófea Grill Restaurant Újbuda.

Thursday, 27 June 2013

9:00-10:30 Invited talk 3

Ildikó Schlotter: Parameterized complexity of some stable matching problems

10:30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:30 Invited talk 4

Katarína Cechlárová: Computational complexity of competitive equilibria in exchange markets

12:30-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:30 Invited talk 5

Francis Bloch: Dynamic matching problems

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-17:30 Invited talk 6

Joana Pais: Experimental studies in matching markets

Friday, 28 June 2013

9:00-10:30 Invited talk 7

Szilvia Pápai: Matching with priorities

10:30-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:30 Invited talk 8

Estelle Cantillon: Preference formation in matching mechanisms

12:30-14:00 Lunch break

14:00-15:30 Invited talk 9

Lars Ehlers: Strategy-proofness in markets with indivisibilities

15:30-16:00 Coffee break

16:00-17:30 Invited talk 10

Dorothea Kuebler: University admissions in Germany: empirical and experimental evidence

Facultative social program

Visiting ruin pubs, meeting from 18:00 in Szimpla Kert