September 5, 2016 in Thinking Analytically
Dating website matchups
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https://doi.org/10.1287/LYTX.2016.05.13in
As the owner of a new dating website, you’re working on the logic on how to best match men and women together. Providing people with good dating candidates is important to keep them interested in using the website and for relationship success. So far, your first clients are 10 women and 10 men.
Table 1 shows the personality characteristics for each person. The goal is to match pairs (one man to one woman) so that the most number of characteristics match. For each characteristic that matches, you earn one point. For example, matching Man 1 and Woman 1 would be worth two points (because the Living Preference and Social characteristics match).
| Person | Politics | Hobby | Living Preference | Social |
| Man 1 | Liberal Running | Running | Rural | Introverted |
| Man 2 | Liberal | Chess | Rural | Outgoing |
| Man 3 | Conservative | Running | Urban | Introverted |
| Man 4 | Liberal | Running | Rural | Introverted |
| Man 5 | Conservative | Running | Rural | Introverted |
| Man 6 | Conservative | Chess | Rural | Introverted |
| Man 7 | Conservative | Chess | Urban | Introverted |
| Man 8 | Liberal | Chess | Urban | Introverted |
| Man 9 | Liberal | Running | Urban | Introverted |
| Man 10 | Liberal | Running | Urban | Outgoing |
| Woman 1 | Conservative | Chess | Rural | Introverted |
| Woman 2 | Liberal | Running | Rural | Introverted |
| Woman 3 | Conservative | Chess | Rural | Outgoing |
| Woman 4 | Conservative | Running | Urban | Outgoing |
| Woman 5 | Conservative | Chess | Urban | Outgoing |
| Woman 6 | Liberal | Running | Urban | Introverted |
| Woman 7 | Conservative | Chess | Urban | Outgoing |
| Woman 8 | Conservative | Running | Urban | Outgoing |
| Woman 9 | Liberal Chess | Chess | Urban | Introverted |
| Woman 10 | Liberal Running | Running | Rural | Introverted |
Table 1: The dating game, circa 2016.
Question:
What is the maximum number of points you can achieve?
Send your answer to [email protected] by Nov. 15. The winner, chosen randomly from correct answers, will receive a $25 Amazon Gift Card. Past questions and answers can be found at puzzlor.com.
John Toczek is the AVP Predictive Modeling at Chubb in the Decision Analytics and Predictive Modeling department. He earned his BSc. in Chemical Engineering at Drexel University (1996) and his MSc. in Operations Research from Virginia Commonwealth University (2005).