School choice : a discrete optimization approach
Name
1191901076-MIT.pdf
Size
1.88 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
d5842912bbb71230dc672048b74fcb1b
Author(s)
Graham, Justin W.
Advisor(s)
Dimitris Bertsimas.
Date Issued
2020
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
An equitable and flexible mechanism for assigning students to schools is a major concern for many school districts. The school a student attends dramatically impacts the quality of education, access to resources, family and neighborhood cohesion, and transportation costs. Facing this intricate optimization problem, school districts often utilize to stable-matching techniques which only produce stable matchings that do not incorporate these different objectives; this can be expensive and inequitable. We present a new optimization model for the Stable Matching (SM) school choice problem which relies on an algorithm we call Price-Costs-Flexibility-and- Fairness (PCF2). Our model leverages techniques to balance competing objectives using mixed-integer optimization methods. We explore the trade-offs between stability, costs, and preferences and show that, surprisingly, there are stable solutions that decrease transportation costs by 8-17% over the Gale-Shapley solution.
Description
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, May, 2020
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 32-34).
Subjects
Operations Research Center.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Operations Research Center
Sloan School of Management
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MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.
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