Weighted Random Popular Matchings

TL;DR

This paper investigates the existence of weighted popular matchings in a preference-based applicant-item matching problem, providing probabilistic bounds for the existence of such matchings in random instances under certain size and weight conditions.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of k-weighted popular matchings and establishes probabilistic bounds for their existence in random instances, focusing on the 2-weighted case.

Findings

If m/n^{4/3}=o(1), then with high probability no 2-weighted popular matching exists.

If n^{4/3}/m= o(1), then with high probability a 2-weighted popular matching exists.

The results depend on the ratio of items to applicants and the weight disparity.

Abstract

For a set A of n applicants and a set I of m items, we consider a problem of computing a matching of applicants to items, i.e., a function M mapping A to I; here we assume that each applicant $x \in A$ provides a preference list on items in I. We say that an applicant $x \in A$ prefers an item p than an item q if p is located at a higher position than q in its preference list, and we say that x prefers a matching M over a matching M' if x prefers M(x) over M'(x). For a given matching problem A, I, and preference lists, we say that M is more popular than M' if the number of applicants preferring M over M' is larger than that of applicants preferring M' over M, and M is called a popular matching if there is no other matching that is more popular than M. Here we consider the situation that A is partitioned into $A_{1},A_{2},...,A_{k}$, and that each $A_{i}$ is assigned a weight $w_{i}>0$ such that w_{1}>w_{2}>...>w_{k}>0$. For such a matching problem, we say that M is more popular than M' if the total weight of applicants preferring M over M' is larger than that of applicants preferring M' over M, and we call M an k-weighted popular matching if there is no other matching that is more popular than M. In this paper, we analyze the 2-weighted matching problem, and we show that (lower bound) if $m/n^{4/3}=o(1)$, then a random instance of the 2-weighted matching problem with $w_{1} \geq 2w_{2}$ has a 2-weighted popular matching with probability o(1); and (upper bound) if $n^{4/3}/m = o(1)$, then a random instance of the 2-weighted matching problem with $w_{1} \geq 2w_{2}$ has a 2-weighted popular matching with probability 1-o(1).