How Good Are Popular Matchings
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Abstract: In this paper, we consider the Hospital Residents problem (HR) and the Hospital Residents problem with Lower Quotas (HRLQ). In this model with two sided preferences, stability is a well accepted notion of optimality. However, in the presence of lower quotas, a stable and feasible matching need not exist. For the HRLQ problem, our goal therefore is to output a good feasible matching assuming that a feasible matching exists. Computing matchings with minimum number of blocking pairs (MinBP) and minimum number of blocking residents (MinBR) are known to be NP-Complete. The only approximation algorithms for these problems work under severe restrictions on the preference lists. We present an algorithm which circumvents this restriction and computes a popular matching in the HRLQ instance. We show that on data-sets generated using various generators, our algorithm performs very well in terms of blocking pairs and blocking residents. Yokoi (ISAAC 2017) recently studied envy-free matchings for the HRLQ problem. We propose a simple modification to Yokoi's algorithm to output a maximal envy-free matching. We observe that popular matchings outperform envy-free matchings on several parameters of practical importance, like size, number of blocking pairs, number of blocking residents. In the absence of lower quotas, that is, in the Hospital Residents (HR) problem, stable matchings are guaranteed to exist. Even in this case, we show that popularity is a practical alternative to stability. For instance, on synthetic data-sets generated using a particular model, as well as on real world data-sets, a popular matching is on an average 8-10% larger in size, matches more number of residents to their top-choice, and more residents prefer the popular matching as compared to a stable matching. Our comprehensive study reveals the practical appeal of popular matchings for the HR and HRLQ problems.
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Cites work
- ``Almost-stable matchings in the hospitals/residents problem with couples
- A Size-Popularity Tradeoff in the Stable Marriage Problem
- College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 45086 (Why is no real title available?)
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 7278072 (Why is no real title available?)
- Marriage, honesty, and stability
- Popular Matchings
- Popular matchings in the marriage and roommates problems
- Popular matchings with lower quotas
- Popular matchings with multiple partners
- Popularity in the generalized hospital residents setting
- Size versus stability in the marriage problem
- The hospitals/residents problem with lower quotas
Cited in
(5)- Popularity in the generalized hospital residents setting
- Popular matchings with lower quotas
- Envy-freeness and relaxed stability: hardness and approximation algorithms
- Envy-freeness and relaxed stability for lower-quotas: a parameterized perspective
- Generalized capacity planning for the hospital-residents problem
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