
How a matchmaking algorithm saved lives - Oatseller
https://medium.com/@UofCalifornia/how-a-matchmaking-algorithm-saved-lives-2a65ac448698#.kyn7zeqet
======
sudo_bang_bang
There's also a great Freakonomics podcast about this story
[http://freakonomics.com/podcast/make-me-a-match-a-new-
freako...](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/make-me-a-match-a-new-freakonomics-
radio-episode/)

------
makach
NPR RadioLab did an amazing story on this!

[http://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2015/06/11/41222485...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2015/06/11/412224854/how-an-economist-helped-patients-find-the-right-
kidney-donor)

------
loversinarms
Isn'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
You 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.

------
davidw
Pretty powerful stuff. Puts paid to the notion that economics is "not real" or
all handwaving, as you sometimes read here.

~~~
lostmsu
Not sure this particular algorithm has anything to do about economics, except
its author is an economist.

~~~
Kalium
Matchmaking is arguably _the_ core of economics.

------
madsushi
There'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.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/07/alvin_roth_on_m.html)

------
est
Might be related, but I recently discovered this

[http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/SocialGolferProblem/](http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/SocialGolferProblem/)

~~~
pmiller2
That 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-
Ap...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Edition-Discrete-Mathematics-
Applications/dp/1420082965)

------
phaedrus441
As someone who just certified a residency match list last night, I'm glad this
system exists.

------
chrischen
Is there a patent on this?

~~~
DennisP
The basic Gale-Shapley algorithm was published in 1962.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem)

~~~
mapmap
Is this the algorithm that was discussed in the article? I couldn't find a
link.

~~~
DennisP
Yes, from the article: "In the 1960s, researchers David Gale and Lloyd Shapley
embarked upon research to take up an unlikely subject: matchmaking."

