THE STABLE MARRIAGE PROBLEM

– OPTIMIZING DIFFERENT CRITERIA USING GENETIC ALGORITHMS

Master’s (one year) thesis in Informatics (15 credits)

Ioannis Damianidis
[email protected]

AUTUMN 2010:MI18

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Title: The Stable Marriage Problem – Optimizing Different Criteria Using Genetic
Algorithms

Year: 2010

Author/s: Ioannis Damianidis

Supervisor: Ulf Johansson

Abstract

“The Stable marriage problem (SMP) is basically the problem of finding a stable matching
between two sets of persons, the men and the women, where each person in every group has a list
containing every person that belongs to other group ordered by preference. The first ones to discover
a stable solution for the problem were D. Gale and G.S. Shapley. Today the problem and most of its
variations have been studied by many researchers, and for most of them polynomial time algorithms
do not exist. Lately genetic algorithms have been used to solve such problems and have often
produced better solutions than specialized polynomial algorithms. In this thesis we study and show
that the Stable marriage problem has a number of important real-world applications. It the
experimentation, we model the original problem and one of its variations and show the benefits of
using genetic algorithms for solving the SMP.”

Keywords: Stable Marriage problem, Genetic Algorithm, Maximum egalitarian happiness

matching, maximizing criteria.

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Table of Contents

1 INTRODUCTION...............................................................................................................................................5

1.1 THE STANDARD SMP...............................................................................................................................5

1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT...........................................................................................................................6
1.3 OBJECTIVES.............................................................................................................................................. 7
1.4 MAIN CONTRIBUTION............................................................................................................................7
1.5 OVERALL METHOD................................................................................................................................. 7

2 BACKGROUND THEORY................................................................................................................................8

2.1 STABLE MARRIAGE PROBLEM VARIATIONS ....................................................................................8

2.1.1 Stable Marriage with Ties................................................................................................................... 8

2.1.2 Stable Marriage with Incomplete lists .............................................................................................. 9
2.1.3 Agents................................................................................................................................................10
2.1.4 The sex-equal stable marriage...........................................................................................................10
2.1.5 Stable matchings............................................................................................................................... 12
2.1.6 Quantitative lists...............................................................................................................................12
2.1.7 Beauty and distance...........................................................................................................................13

2.2 REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS............................................................................................................14

2.2.1 College admissions and the hospitals residents problem..................................................................14

2.2.2 The sailors-boats problem.................................................................................................................16
2.2.3 The stable room-mates problem........................................................................................................16
2.2.4 Application in router technology.......................................................................................................17
2.2.5 Stable allocation problem.................................................................................................................17

2.3 THE GENETIC ALGORITHM................................................................................................................. 17

2.3.1 Definition and history........................................................................................................................18

2.3.2 The genetic algorithm........................................................................................................................18
2.3.3 Selection............................................................................................................................................20

2.4 RELATED WORK.....................................................................................................................................20

3 METHOD...........................................................................................................................................................23

3.1 REPRESENTATION..................................................................................................................................23

3.1.1 Population......................................................................................................................................... 23
3.1.2 Initialization.......................................................................................................................................23
3.1.3 Crossover...........................................................................................................................................23
3.1.4 Mutation............................................................................................................................................25

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 3.1.5 Fitness function.................................................................................................................................25
3.1.6 Implemented algorithms for comparison...........................................................................................26

3.2 EXPERIMENTS..............................................................................................................................................26

3.2.1 Algorithm settings...................................................................................................................................26

3.2.2 Original Stable Marriage.........................................................................................................................27
3.2.3 Stable Marriage with Correlated lists......................................................................................................32

4 ANALYSIS......................................................................................................................................................... 37

4.1 COMPARISON OF GA RESULTS WITH GSS RESULTS......................................................................37

4.2 COMPARISON OF GA RESULTS BETWEEN THE TWO VARIATIONS............................................ 39

5 CONCLUSIONS................................................................................................................................................40

5.1 OBJECTIVES............................................................................................................................................ 41

6 SUMMARY........................................................................................................................................................41

7 APPENDIX ........................................................................................................................................................42

8 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................................45

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1 Introduction

1.1 The standard SMP

The stable marriage problem is basically the problem of finding a stable matching between
two sets of persons, the men and the women, where each person in every group has a list
containing every person that belongs to other group ordered by preference. The problem of
finding a stable matching was stated in a paper published in 1962 by Gale and Shapley (1962,
p. 11), and it can be defined as follows:

“A certain community consists of n men and women. Each person ranks those of the
opposite sex in accordance with his or her preferences for a marriage partner. We seek a
satisfactory way of marrying off all members in the community. … we call a set of marriages
unstable (and here the suitability of the term is quite clear) if under it there are a man and a
woman who are not married to each other but prefer each other to their actual mates.”

The stable marriage problem (SMP) has been studied and researched by a large number of
scholars throughout the previous decades. The first ones to discover a stable solution for the
problem were D. Gale and G.S. Shapley (1962) by the introduction of their algorithm, called
the GSS algorithm, in their paper ”College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage”. Since
their findings, many other aspects and variations of the problem have been examined and
solved. Also a multitude of modifications and implementations of their algorithm exist.

This is how the GSS algorithm (Gale and Shapley, 1962) functions: One of the sets (usually
the men) is the applicants, that is the ones who propose marriage. We start with the first man
who proposes to his most preferred woman. She has to accept since she is single and they
become engaged. They are not matched until the end of the procedure. We could say that the
woman keeps the man in mind in case no-one better comes up. This is one of the assumptions
of the algorithm. Then the second man proposes to his most preferred woman. Now there are
two possibilities: She is either engaged or single. If she is single they become engaged, but if
on the other hand she is engaged, she checks her list and compares her fiancée with the
proposer. If she prefers the new man more than her fiancée then she breaks her engagement
and creates a new engagement with the new man. If not then the man proposes to his next
most preferred woman and the cycle repeats. The algorithm assures that every girl will get a
proposal in the end and it proves that there is always a stable set of marriages. It ends when
every woman has gotten at least one proposal and since we have n men that propose to n
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women, the algorithm's complexity is O(n ) (Dubins and Freedman, 1981). In figure 1, below
you can see the algorithm where m = men and w = women.

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1. assign each person to be free;
2. while some man m is free and m has a nonempty list loop
3. w := first woman on m's list; m proposes to w
4. if m is not on w's preference list then
5. delete w from m's preference list;
6. goto line 3
7. end if
8. if some man p is engaged to w then
9. assign p to be free;
10. end if
11. assign m and w to be engaged to each other;
12. for each each successor p of m on w's list loop
13. delete p from w's list;
14. delete w from p's list;
15. end loop;
16. end loop;

Figure 1: The Gale Shapley algorithm

The purpose of this thesis is two-fold. In the first part, we will analyse the SMP and its real-
world applications, and the variations of the problem. Later, we will present our own
implementation through the use of the genetic algorithm(GA), and evaluate our results
according to our objectives.

1.2 Problem Statement

The GSS algorithm always finds a stable matching. In a stable matching, there is no man-woman pair
that would prefer each other compared to their current matches. However there are some problems
with the original algorithm. First of all, it produces either the man optimal or the woman optimal
result, depending on which group is proposing. “A stable marriage is called optimal if every applicant
is at least as well off under it as under any other stable assignment. ” (Gale and Shapley, 1962, p. 10).

The problem with the man optimal result is that it is also the result where every woman gets
her worst choice partner, meaning the marriages are stable but all the women are highly
unsatisfied with their partners, and vice versa for the woman-optimal matching.

Since 1962, a great amount of articles and books have been written about the stable marriage
problem. Nowadays, there are variations of the SMP which have been proven to be NP-hard
(Iwama, Manlove, Miyazaki and Morita, 1999; Manlove, Irving, Iwama and Miyazaki, 2002).
NP-hard stands for 'non-deterministic polynomial-time hard' which means, that the SMP
belongs to a category of problems for which it has not been proven yet if polynomial time
algorithms exist for solving them. Therefore, approximation algorithms were suggested to
deal with the NP-hard variations of the problem. An approximation algorithm is an algorithm
that because no polynomial time solution can be found, it settles for an optimal solution, of a
specific optimality, of a subset of the problem.

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In contrast with approximation algorithms, the genetic algorithm is a heuristic algorithm
which finds a solution of good quality but of unknown optimality. Genetic algorithms are a
category of evolutionary algorithms that function in a procedure similar to the one used in
natural evolution to find solutions to optimization problems. They usually start from a
population of random solutions and then rate the individuals using a fitness function. The best
individuals are combined then together to create better solutions until an acceptable result is
reached. They also allow us to specify the properties of the solution we are looking for, by
modifying the fitness function. This is why we decided to use a genetic algorithm for our
experiments because in that way we can specify if we want solutions that are just stable or
also have a better happiness for the women than the GSS result, or have other different
properties according to the criteria we wish to apply.

GAs are especially equipped for dealing with NP-hard problems (Grefenstette, Gopal,
Rosmaita and Van Gucht, 1985). The reason because genetic algorithms are good at this is
because they can go through a large number of solutions quite fast and locate good solutions.
One example of a problem that falls in the same category and has been successfully solved
with the genetic algorithm, is the travelling salesman problem where we seek to find the
shortest way of travelling between a number of cities.

An interesting variation of the SMP is the Stable Marriage with Correlated lists where lists
are affected by beauty, which means that certain individuals that are considered prettier are
higher in everyone's list.

1.3 Objectives
The objectives behind this thesis are basically two:

1. First of all, our goal is to find and describe the most important instances of the SMP
and its variants in real-life.

2. Our next objective is by studying the original algorithm by Gale and Shapley. to
create a solution based on a genetic algorithm that focuses on finding solutions that
may not be stable but have better happiness values and are more fair than the GSS
solution, concerning the difference between happiness between men and women.
Also, we will evaluate how correlated lists affect the solutions.

1.4 Main contribution

Our contribution is the evaluation of how correlation affects the results in the GA results. It is
clear that as the level of correlation increases, the properties of the solutions also change.

1.5 Overall method

In order to achieve our goals we followed the following strategy. Concerning the first part of
the research, we did a thorough examination and literature study of previous work on the

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subject, and identified SMP applications and modifications that exist.

For the second part, we decided to use the genetic algorithm to create an implementation of
the problem in MATLAB. After that we created a suitable fitness function and in addition an
implementation of the GSS algorithm. Then a number of experiments was conducted for the
original SMP and for the Stable Marriage with Correlated lists. Our plan was to compare the
two implementations and judge them in accordance to certain criteria, in order to show how
efficient the GA is for finding solutions to the Stable marriage problem, and how these
solutions change as correlation increases.

2 Background Theory
In chapter 2 we provide all the instances and variations of the SMP we managed to locate
through literature study. After that we describe some basic elements of the genetic algorithm
and finally we present other attempts to combine the two subjects.

2.1 Stable Marriage problem variations

There are a few variations of the SMP that can be combined together of course to create even
more. Here we present those that are the most important and have been studied more over the
last 50 years.

2.1.1 Stable marriage with Ties

Perhaps the simplest generalization of the SMP is the SMT, the Stable marriage problem with
Ties, or with indifference (Iwama, Manlove, Miyazaki and Morita, 1999; Irving, Manlove
and Scott, 2000). The difference about it is that the preference lists include ties, in the sense
that a person finds two of the persons of the opposite sex equally preferable and they both
occupy the same position in his/her preference list. The notion of stability then changes. In
order for us to move on, we need to present the notions of weak strong and super stability as
mentioned by Manlove (1999, p. 3) :

“A matching M is weakly stable if there is no couple (x; y), each of whom strictly prefers the other to
his/her partner in M. Also, a matching M is strongly stable if there is no couple (x; y) such that x
strictly prefers y to his/her partner in M, and y either strictly prefers x to his/her partner in M or is
indifferent between them. Finally, a matching M is super-stable if there is no couple (x; y), each of
whom either strictly prefers the other to his/her partner in M or is indifferent between them. ”

Out of the three stability notions weak-stability is the most important (Manlove, et al., 2002) and it is
shown that a weak stable matching always exists. In order to tackle the SMT the solution is quite
simple.

“By breaking the ties arbitrarily, an instance I of SMT becomes an instance I' of SM, and it is clear
that a stable matching for I' is a weakly stable matching for I. Thus a weakly stable matching for I
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may be found in O(n ) time, using the Gale/Shapley algorithm" (Manlove, 1999, p. 2).

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The way however, that ties are broken has an impact on the size of the stable matchings that
the algorithm produces, and it is impossible to identify the most suitable way (Irving and
Manlove, 2007). Because every instance of SMT actually includes many different instances
depending on how we choose to treat it, we have many different sizes of stable matchings
according to the way we break ties (Irving, Manlove and Scott, 2008). Nevertheless, Irving
(1994) produced an algorithm that finds solutions that include no strong or super-stable
matching.

The SMT is usually studied in combination with the next variation, that of Incomplete Lists,
so a few more algorithmic solutions about it are mentioned in chapter 2.1.2.

2.1.2 Stable marriage with Incomplete Lists

Known as SMI (Stable Marriage with Incomplete lists) it is a variation of the original
problem that is more realistic. In this case, we have the situation where a woman might
declare that one or more men are unacceptable for her, meaning she would under no
circumstances accept a proposal from them even if she were single. A stable matching exists
in this variation but it does not always contain all persons, some might remain “single” (Gale
and Sotomayor, 1985).

You can observe below the differences between the preference lists for the women, for the
SMP with a population of 4 men and women, for the four variations of the problem. SMTI
stands for Stable marriage with Ties and Incomplete lists which is the combination of the two
problems.

Wx is the preference list of woman number x (likewise for men) and the brackets in figure 2
symbolize ties in the lists. The SMI and SMTI lists contain only the acceptable individuals.

Standard problem SMT

w1: m1 m3 m4 m2 w1: m1 [m3 m4] m2
w2: m4 w1 m3 m2 w2: m4 m1 [m3 m2]
w3: m1 m2 m3 m4 w3: m1 m2 m3 m4
w4: m2 m3 m4 m1 w4: [m2 m3 m4] m1

SMI SMTI
w1: m1 w1: m1 [m3 m4]
w2: m4 m3 m2 w2: [m3 m2]
w3: m1 m2 w3: m1
w4: m2 m3 m4 m1 w4: [m2 m3 m4] m1
Figure 2: Preference lists for SMP

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By combining SMT and SMI we get the SMTI(Stable marriage problem with Ties and
Incomplete Lists), which was first addressed by Ronn (1986). Manlove (1999) also provided
three algorithms, one for each notion of stability, that were based on Irving's work (1994).
Irving's (1994) contribution was algorithms for the stable marriage problem with complete
lists and ties. The application of both incomplete lists and ties causes the problem to become
NP-hard (Iwama, Manlove, Miyazaki and Morita, 1999). For the SMTI a number of
approximation algorithms exist (Iwama, Miyazaki and Yamauchi, 2007; Irving and Manlove,
2007). In the SMTI, the stable matchings that exist, are not always of the same size. So the
algorithms must also focus on finding a maximum stable matching, also known as MAX
SMTI (Iwama, Manlove, Miyazaki and Morita, 1999). In comparison with the SMP, the
SMTI also has at least one stable matching where the algorithm's complexity is O(a), By a we
symbolize the acceptable pairs that exist (Gusfield and Irving, 1989). Alternative solutions
include the use of local search solutions, that try to improve a matching by moving from a
solution with n stable pairs to one with n+1 until an optimal one is reached (Marx and
Schlotter, 2010; Gelain, et al., 2010).

2.1.3 Agents

Agents refer to the existence of individuals, whose purpose is to match the men with the
women and each of them has in their possession the preference lists of one or more
participants. The pairs are created after negotiations between the respective agents. The
preference lists of each person therefore are hidden. Each agent only has possession of the
information of his own client, and knows nothing about the way other participants have
ranked him/her. It can be said that if the participants chose to act as agents to themselves this
variation could be treated as the original problem. The main focus in this situation for every
participant is to act by keeping his preferences private. This problem is known as the
Distributed Stable Marriage Problem (DisSM) (Brito and Meseguer, 2008).

2.1.4 The sex-equal stable marriage

It is clearly evident that the SMP could never be implemented to solve the problem of
divorces in modern society. The reason for that is that each man or woman would prefer the
matching in which their happiness is maximized. The algorithms which have as a goal to
achieve stable solutions are diametrically opposed to the individual happiness of any
participant (Caldarelli and Capocci, 2000).

We adopt the idea that a person's happiness or his regret cost, relates to the rank of his/her
partner has on his/her preference list (Dzierzawa and Omero, 2000). In the following simple
problem for 3 men and women, the regret cost for man 1 if he picks woman 3 is 3 since that
is her rank, and woman 3 has a regret cost of 2:

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 Men’s preference lists Women’s preference lists

1: 1 2 3 1: 3 1 2
2: 3 2 1 2: 3 2 1
3: 2 3 1 3: 3 1 2

Figure 3: Regret costs

Therefore, if our aim is to maximize the total happiness for both the men and women, we
could achieve it through the minimization of a function. We bring into attention that in the
Gale Shapley algorithm even though the happiness of the men is maximum, there might be
another stable matching with a better total happiness.

The sex-equal stable marriage problem (Gusfield and Irving, 1989), or the sex fair problem,
can be defined like this: If M is a stable matching between n men and women and the
position of a woman w in a man's preference list is p (w), and for the woman p (m)
m w
respectively, we can define the happiness cost h(M), and the egalitarian happiness cost eh(M),
for any instance of SMP, with formulas (1) and (2) (Iwama and Miyazaki, 2008).

Happiness cost

h(M) = ∑ pm(w) + ∑ pw(m) (1)

Egalitarian cost

eh(M) = ∑ pm(w) - ∑ pw(m) (2)

We can define the happiness per person if we divide the above numbers with the number of
participants. The formulas 3,4 and 5 give us the happiness per person(hpp), for men or
women, the happiness per couple(hpc) and the egalitarian happiness per couple(ehc)
(Caldarelli and Capocci, 2000). Where N is the number of men/women.

Happiness per person

hpp(M) = 1/N( ∑ pm(w)) (3)

Happiness per couple

hpc(M) = 1/N( ∑ pm(w) + ∑ pw(m)) (4)

Egalitarian happiness per couple

ehc(M) = 1/N( ∑ pm(w) - ∑ pw(m)) (5)

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Back in 1987, Gusfield (1987) presented three polynomial time algorithms using graph
theory to solve the SMP, and proved how to construct a tree graph, representing the SMP.
One of those algorithms found the minimum regret stable matching for women. The problem
of finding a sex-equal stable matching is NP-hard (Yanagisawa, 1993), and polynomial
algorithms where suggested by Gusfield and Irving (1989). Approximation algorithms also
exist for the sex-equal problem (Iwama, 2007).

Apart from those forms of happiness and their respective maximum matchings, lately there
has been research around finding a lexicographic maximum matching. A lexicographic
maximum stable matching is defined as follows (Irving, Manlove and Scott, 2008, p. 2):

“A lexicographic maximum stable matching is one in which the maximum number of people obtain
their 1rst-choice partner, and subject to this condition, the maximum number obtain their second-
choice partner, and so on.”

2.1.5 Stable matchings

We already mentioned that at least one stable matching exists in every SMP instance (Gale
and Shapley, 1962). Knuth (1976) wondered if it is possible to know the number of stable
matchings that exist if we know the number of men and women. The answer was given by
Irving and Leather (1986), by an algorithm that calculated, that if n is a power of 2, we can
calculate the number of stable matchings that exist. In SMTI, or in the hospital/residents
problem with couples, that is described later, a stable matching does not always exist.
However, other solutions that are not stable but have a maximum number of stable pairs can
be found in those situations. This constitutes, a good judging criteria, concerning the quality
of the solutions. Also, if total stability is not a fundamental requirement then solutions with
the maximum number of couples, are frequently more desirable, especially for a large number
of participants. In these cases the matches with the largest possible number of stable
matchings are given priority (Biro, Manlove and Mittal, 2010).

2.1.6 Quantitative lists

In contrast to the SMP where every man only assigns a rank to every woman, SMP with
Quantitative lists, or SMQ, includes values that show how much a man prefers a woman
compared to another one. SMQ can be handled in the same way and can be solved with
traditional SMP algorithms (Gusfield, 1987; Irving and Gusfield, 1989). Lately a new side of
the problem was studied where the notion of a -stability was introduced, where a symbolizes
the preference value (Pini, Roshi, Venable and Walsh, 2010).

2.1.7 Beauty and distance

Caldarelli and Capocci (2000) created a more realistic model by introducing the notions of
beauty and distance. It is obvious, that in the real world, people's opinions about beauty tend
to be similar, so those tendencies should be reflected in the preference lists of each gender. It
is highly unlikely for example, in an instance of 1000 men and women that someone would
rank a woman 1st and someone else would rank the same woman last. This instance of the

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problem also known as SM with Correlated lists, is of great significance because it is a closer
representation of reality than the standard SMP where the preference lists are created
randomly. Also in the real world, people usually find partners that live geographically close to
them. By applying those two principles in their model Caldarelli and Capocci (2000) came to
the conclusion that:

“It is interesting to note, however, that even if the more beautiful players have by far
a larger satisfaction in their matching with respect to the others, the general dissatisfaction
in the system increases. As a matter of fact, when the concept of “most beautiful” in the
world tends to be the same for everyone it becomes more and more difficult to make more
people happy. However, the presence of beauty transforms in a fairer way the GS algorithm
that now tends to give the same results regardless the sex.” (Caldarelli and Capocci, 2000, p.
4).

The above results can be easily explained. In the case of uncorrelated lists, it is easier to
satisfy the majority of the participants because their interests, in most cases, do not coincide.
So in extreme cases like in the man-optimal matching it could happen that every man is
matched with his first choice, if all the first choices are different. When beauty is applied
however, it is certain that the opinions of people and their preference lists will start to look
more and more alike. Therefore, it is evident that more and more people would have to settle
for a lower ranking partner. Thus the overall satisfaction decreases compared to original SMP.
Nevertheless, the happiness for the women increases since now the more beautiful women
would get more proposals and it is more likely that they would get more preferable partners.

In order to introduce beauty into the SMP we can use formula number (6), that Caldarelli and
Capocci (2000) used:

S = n + U*I (6)

The preference lists in this situation are created as follows. Each man gives a score S to each
woman. S is consisted of n and UI. In this case, n is a random number between 0 and 1. This
reflects the man's individual opinion of the woman. The second number I belongs again to
(0,1), but is the same for every man. U is a value used to weigh the contribution of I in every
preference list. In that way it is certain that every man will have a different value for the same
woman w, but we ensure that the scores tend towards a specific value according to the value
of I. For larger values of U, beauty plays greater part, and is considered more important, and
the larger U becomes the more the lists become identical for everyone. It is also noted that
there is a gap between the happiness of the more preferable and “uglier” people, that grows
as U increases. If U = 0 then beauty plays no part whatsoever and we have an instance of the
original SMP. Then all the women are sorted according to their scores in a descending order
and the preference lists are created. The women's preference lists are created in the same
way.

In contrast, the introduction of distance, calculated in the scores in a similar way as beauty,
did not yield different results in comparison with the classic algorithm, because the criterion
of beauty had a much larger impact on the creation of the lists. Distance did not give an

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advantage to every woman or man that was considered beautiful, but rather every participant
received a set of “neighbours” that had an advantage in comparison with the rest people for
that specific preference list. So the lists' nature became more random in contrast with beauty.
In a subsequent paper (Caldarelli, Capocci and Laureti, 2001) it was considered that the
participants had incomplete information about the other sex. It was thought that distance
separated people in such a way, that some of the participants had access or were acquainted to
only a fraction of the population of the other sex. So the preference lists contained subsets of
the population different for each man/woman, and the problem now started to look like SMI.
The results from such studies implied that, the competition for more beautiful partners was
not so fierce as before, due to lack of knowledge and lack of alternative partners to choose
from. So as a result, the more the number of people that were missing from the preference
lists increased, the better total happiness tended to be.

Beauty and distance are terms borrowed from the real world. They do not apply only to the
marriage example. We could say that beauty is the attribute that the other side finds attractive
in every instance. For example, in the student-hospitals representation which is examined in
chapet 2.2.1, beauty has different meanings for each side. For the students, beauty could be
the sum of all their qualifications, since that is what hospitals would find attractive in a
medical student, and for the hospitals beauty could represent how well-known or prestigious
a hospital is. Distance could also have some significance, since some students might prefer
hospitals situated close to their homes or in specific cities where they would like to reside in.

2.2 Real world applications

There are some instances of the stable marriage problem like the firm-workers problem (Roth
and Sotomayor,1992), that are exact copies of the SMP with only the terminology changing.
The firm-workers problem is a basic representation of the job market, where every company
wants to hire the best workers and every worker wants to be hired at the company he prefers
most, and is of course an instance of SMP. The original problem is however, significant since
all other methodologies for solving the more complex variations are based on the GSS
algorithm.

We will not mention any more real-world applications that are similar to the firm-workers
example, but we will present those instances that include different aspects, in comparison
with the original problem and how researchers have addressed them in order to deal with
their characteristic properties.

2.2.1 College admissions and the hospital residents problem

Perhaps the most practical and the most well-known application of SMP is college
admissions. The same problem is also known as the hospitals/medical students matching
problem (Roth and Sotomayor, 1992). It was mentioned for the first time in the paper by Gale
and Shapley (1962). Here we have the notion that each college can admit a number of
students, so more than one student can be admitted in the same college. The problem that led
to the use of SMP in this situation, was that in the mid-40's medical students, when they
received offers from hospitals, they used to wait in case a better offer would present itself

14
from a hospital more to their liking. The situation would end up in unhappy students who
accepted their first offers only to regret it or in unhappy hospitals when students did not keep
their earlier commitments.

The problem was resolved through an initiative called the National Internships Matching
Problem (Roth and Sotomayor, 1990) which in 1951 solved the problem long before Gale and
Shapley came up with stable matchings. Same initiatives are still used around the world for
the particular problem such as USA, Canada and Scotland (Irving, Manlove and Scott, 2000).
These organisations have a policy of producing the hospital/college optimal matching.
Obviously, the algorithm solves the problem but there is one alteration required. Since
hospitals/colleges take in a number of students we need to have as many clones of every
hospital as their quota (Dubins and Freedman, 1981). All the clones have the same preference
rank as the original hospital. Then we have a case of matching many to one.

In the same paper (Dubins and Freedman, 1981) it was proven that the original algorithm
always resulted in the student-optimal result and it was also shown that by deliberating
handing in false preferences a student, cannot improve his position, that is to receive a better
matching, provided that all the other students are truthful about their own. If a group of
students applies the same strategy, some might get better matchings but not all of them.
Therefore, it is more profitable, for the proposers to always hand in their real preferences.

However, the above statement is true for the proposing side only. It was proven by Dubins
and Freedman (1981) and Gale and Sotomayor (1985), that if a woman states a falsified
preference list, then under some situations she could yield better results. It was proven that:

“If there is more than one stable matching, then there is at least one woman who will
be better off by falsifying, assuming the others tell the truth.” (Gale and Sotomayor, 1985, p.
5)

In the category of cheating we could also include a situation studied by Irving (2008), where
after the allocation of hospitals, two students realised that they would prefer to have one
another's hospital, and exchanged their positions. This did not happen because the matching
was not stable but because the students noticed that they were better off trading places,
although the hospitals were quite unhappy about it. Then those two students formed a man-
blocking pair.

If we generalise the original problem and consider the case where the number of students is
more than the available college positions, then there is a number of students that will remain
“single”. Those students will be the same in every stable matching (Gale and Sotomayor,
1985).

In the case where the hospital-residents problem might be an instance of SMT there are some
facts that need to be taken into account. This situation is very plausible since hospitals have a
large number of applicants on a national level, and there might often be applicants with the
same qualifications, or from the applicants point of view indifference between choices is
certain to come up. Irving, Manlove and Scott (2000), the existence of an algorithm that

15
produces a weak stable matching which has the largest number of pairs as possible, and they
also noticed the problem where a student might convince a hospital to prefer him in the
expense of another student, when the hospital is indifferent between the two of them.

This system has been in use since the 1950's in America. However in the 1970's, it was noted
that there was a number of students that negotiated their positions outside the system. This
was due to the fact that many medical students used to get married during their college years
so they naturally preferred to be residents at the same hospital (Dean, Goemans and
Immorlica, 2006). So because the system could not facilitate their needs, it was to their
benefit not to participate in the NRMP(National Residents Matching Program). In order to
deal with such cases the NRMP changed its algorithm and strategy many times (Roth and
Sotomayor, 1990; Roth and Peranson, 1999) and allowed couples to have a common
preference list, however in such cases the problem is NP-hard and stable matchings might not
exist (Ronn, 1990). In addition, because in different instances of the hospital/residents
problem with couples, depending on which stable matching we choose, the number of
students that are admitted changes, so selecting one matching over the other could affect the
future of some students (Aldershof and Carducci, 1996).

2.2.2 The sailors-boats problem

In a similar way to the hospitals/medical students problem, we have the problem of assigning
sailors to boats in the U.S, Navy. Sailors are given new assignments every few years and they
are required to hand in a preference list. The Navy is responsible for arranging these
assignments, and it must do so in a way that the cost of making those assignments is
minimized or kept within bounds of the budget. The cost of re-educating and training the
sailors in ways suitable for their new duties is also a cost parameter. But it is also imperative
that the Navy takes into consideration not only the stability of the matching, but also the
happiness of the sailors and the commanders of the boats, because in the boat optimal case,
the happiness of the sailors is minimal, which would certainly result in a drop in moral
(Garrett et al., 2005), or vice versa in the sailor optimal case. The whole process has been
computerized with the sailors selecting their preferred positions through an online pool.

The whole process can be reduced to an instance of the SMTI, but it does not take into
consideration the implementation costs, so that a stable matching might not be affordable, or
a sailor might not be qualified for a job. Therefore, we have another case of a NP-hard
problem.

2.2.3 The stable room-mates problem

Mentioned in the original paper (Gale and Shapley, 1962) as well as by Irving (1985), the
room-mates problem describes a matching problem where a set of people have to pick
someone to be their room-mate, and therefore the sex of the people involved is of no concern
so we can have only one set of people with preference lists. The significant difference
mentioned by Gale and Shapley (1962) is that for this problem even when we have complete
lists, there are cases where a stable matching is not possible. Below, in figure 4 we have the

16
example they gave:

Person Preference List

1 2 34
2 3 14
3 2 14
4 arbitrary

Figure 4: Instance with no stable solutions

It is evidently shown in figure 4, that anyone would prefer someone else other than n. 4 so
this instance will always be unstable.

If we introduce incomplete lists and ties in the problem, we get the SRT and the SRTI. Ronn
(1986; 1990) studied the problem and showed that the existence of ties in preference lists
makes the SRT NP-complete. Irving and Manlove (2002) studied the problem and proposed
an approximation algorithm.

2.2.4 Application in router technology

MUFCA (Most Urgent Cell First) is an algorithm presented by Balaji Prabhakar and Nick
McKeown (1999) for solving the problem of creating a switch used in LAN switches and
routers that while it falls on the category of switches that combine input and output queuing
they act however in the same way as an output-queued switch. In order for it to handle inputs
and outputs, it uses the Gale Shapley algorithm (1962). Each input in MUFCA has a
urgency value and according to that value, the preference lists for each switch are created,
and then inputs are matched with the outputs. This resulted in a speed-up of the process by
four times.

2.2.5 Stable allocation problem

The stable allocation problem is basically a matching of many to many. It has many every
day applications (Dean, Goemans and Immorlica, 2006). The matching of network clients to
specific servers is one of them. In order to improve performance it is better to assign servers
to clients that are closer geographically. Also the assignment of teaching assistants in
universities to courses is another example. One difference with the standard SMP is that costs
or weights that must be satisfied are assigned to each agent in the problem. The Gale-Shapley
algorithm can be extended and it has been proven that it solves this problem in the same way
as the SMP and it provides the man-optimal solution (Dean, Goemans and Immorlica, 2006).

2.3 The genetic algorithm

In chapter 2.3 we describe the basic genetic algorithm and its main components; i.e.,
selection, reproduction and fitness.

17
2.3.1 Definition and history

Genetics algorithms are a category of evolutionary algorithms. A definition of genetic

algorithms was given by Goldberg (1989, p. 1):

“Genetic algorithms are search algorithms based on the mechanics of natural

selection and natural genetics. They combine survival of the fittest among string structures
with a structured yet randomized information exchange to form a search algorithm with some
of the innovative flair of human search. In every generation, a new set of artificial creatures
(strings) is created using bits and pieces of the fittest of the old; an occasional new part is
tried for good measure. While randomized, genetic algorithms are no simple random walk.
They efficiently exploit historical information to speculate on new search points with
expected improved performance."

Research on genetic algorithms started in the 1950's, when following the work of Alex
Fraser (1957), Hans-Joachim Bremermann introduced the notions of mutation and selection
and grounded the basics of genetic algorithms (1962). Interest in this new technique rose in
the 1970's and 1980's mainly due to the book written by John Holland (1975) Adaptation in
Natural and Artificial Systems. Soon applications of GA in artificial intelligence (Schwefel,
1977, 1981) arose, and finally research led to the production of genetic algorithm products.
Genetic algorithms are especially efficient at finding solutions to optimization problems and
search problems. An optimization problem consists of a pool of solutions out of which we
need to find the best possible one. As mentioned in chapter 1, some variations of SMP are
NP-hard optimization problems.

2.3.2 The genetic algorithm

Following the patterns of living organisms and natural evolution, genetic algorithms solve
mathematical problems. In the beginning, the problem that needed solution, had to be
represented as a bit string of 0's and 1's. Nowadays, and in our problem, other representations
are available. Each string represents an individual or a chromosome, and a population is a
collection of those chromosomes. In the travelling salesman problem, we face the problem of
finding the shortest route for a salesman to travel between a number of cities. With 4 cities we
could represent the problem by an ordered string such as this one [2,3,4,1] where each
element of the string represents a city and the order of the elements defines the order with
which they are going to be visited.

The first step of the GA is to create an initial population. There are no restrictions concerning
the initialization, although one could try to begin with a set of solutions that one knows are
better, or it can be done randomly. Once a number of those solutions is created, it is easy to
discern that parts of some chromosomes, or maybe whole ones, will be better than the others.
This evaluation takes place through the use of a fitness function.

A fitness function is an objective function that is used to measure the quality of a

chromosome. Then through the use of a selection function, those chromosomes that are of

18
better quality or fittest, are selected. In nature that would be equivalent to “survival of the
fittest”. It is imperative that the fitness function is related to the goal we wish to achieve. In
the travelling salesman problem again, a possible fitness function would be a function that
calculates the total distance travelled and selects the chromosomes with the minimum value.

More than one fitness functions could be used for the same problem, depending on the value
we wish to minimize. The complexity of the GA is O(n3) (Goldberg, 1989), where n equals
the number elements in a string. The fitness function is the key component of the GA since it
must capture the correct optimization criterion and, at the same time, it must be fairly
straightforward to calculate the fitness values. Because of that it requires a large amount of
computation time for complicated problems, and the GA has been criticised hardly because of
that.

By isolating only the best chromosomes a reproduction strategy is needed after that. There are
many to choose from but the ones mostly used are crossover and mutation.

Crossover is a reproduction technique that requires two chromosomes, the “parents”. By

combining the two parents in a specific way, a number of new chromosomes is acquired,
called “children”. That can be achieved in a variety of ways. The most common is one or two
point crossover. A position is selected in both chromosomes and then they are split them into
two pieces and the pieces in the two parents are swapped.

We then evaluate the children through the fitness function and select the fittest and reject the
weakest, so that we have a new population. In most of the cases, the new generation will be
more fit than the previous one since it will be descended from mostly the fittest
chromosomes. For our problem these two techniques are unsuitable, so we applied a
crossover function called cyclic crossover, which is described in chapter 3.

Mutation is another term borrowed from natural evolution. Mutation only requires one and
not two parents. As the word implies, by applying mutation to a chromosome we randomly
change an element of the string sequence. In problems such as ours and the travelling
salesman, where we have restrictions over the appearance of each number, this technique can
not be applied but there are other ones such as inversion of string, or the swapping of two
elements. The reason behind using mutation along with crossover is because by selecting the
fittest children every time we have the risk of our results becoming localized, and the
population chromosomes' becoming identical to one another. Therefore, by adding mutation,
we avoid that risk. If we wish to further reduce that risk, we can add a probability value to
each member of the population. Therefore, even the weak chromosomes might have an
opportunity to be selected, adding in that way to the diversity of the new population. Unfit
chromosomes will remain in the population for a few generations, thanks to mutation, in a
similar way to natural selection. Nevertheless, if the rate of mutation is too high we run the
risk of losing some fit solutions.

The procedure of evaluating each chromosome and then selecting the most optimal ones as a
reproduction pool, is repeated until the algorithm is terminated. There are a few termination

19
reasons, and the most common are, reaching a previously set number of generations, reaching
a satisfactory solution, achieving a fitness value or running out of computation time. There
are no guarantees that the GA will always find the best solution, because the algorithm is
heuristic. Because the algorithm tends to go for fit solutions in the short-term future, it might
be led towards a solution that seems at the time to be fitter and lose fittest solutions. So,
another algorithm, for example a linear algorithm might sometimes provide a better solution
than the GA. It is still an open question which category of algorithms performs better.

2.3.3 Selection

A number of methods exist for selecting the most appropriate parents for reproduction. The
majority of them evaluate the quality of the chromosomes using the values of the fitness
function. A description of the most common ones follows.

 Stochastic uniform places all individuals in a line where each individual occupies a
part of the line depdning on how fit it is. The algorithm goes through the line in a
number of steps equal to the number of parents. The individual on which the
algorithm lands after each step is then selected as a parent.

 Roulette is similar to a wheel where the area of each individual is proportional to its
fitness value. The better the fitness value, the bigger the area is. The algorithm then
randomly selects one of the sections with a probability equal to the area it occupies.

 Tournament selects each parent by choosing two individuals from the population at
random and then it selects the best one by comparing their fitness values.

Other settings of the GA that were taken into account where the elite count, which is the
number of chromosomes from the previous generation that survive for the next generation
while the rest of them are thrown away. Of significance also are the crossover and mutation
rate, that calculate what percentage of the children are created by crossover and what
percentage by mutation.

2.4 Related work

We have already mentioned that genetic algorithms excel at handling NP-hard optimization
problems. In Roth's and Vande Vate's work (1990) a sequence of steps was described for
finding a stable matching that is similar to the process the GA uses. They used the following
strategy, themselves following the example of Knuth (1976).

Beginning from a random matching, Roth and Vande Vate (1990) located the first blocking
pair for the matching. A blocking pair is a pair of people that prefer each other to their current
partners, and because of them the matching is unstable (Roth and Vande Vate, 1990). A way
to measure how unstable a matching is, is by counting the blocking pairs. By altering the
matching in a way that the two people are matched together one can come to a new matching,
which might be stable or might contain more blocking pairs. By continuing in the same way,

20
a stable matching will eventually be found. The GA basically follows the same pattern, but it
changes more than one pair in every generation.

Aldershof and Carducci (1999), modelled a coding of the SMP and the hospital couples
problem, through the use of a GA they created, and their goal was to solve the
hospital/residents couples problem. They achieved that goal by representing the problem in
the form of a bit matrix X of dimensions h and p, where h is the number of hospital positions,
and p the number of students. If a student and a hospital are matched then the value of of
X(h,p) = 1, otherwise it is 0. That matrix was then translated into a string where every
position represented a hospital, and the number located in that position represented the
student that was assigned to that hospital. They represented the rest of the problem in the
form of inequalities. If all those inequalities are satisfied by a chromosome X then that
chromosome constitutes a stable marriage. Moreover, in their initialization and reproduction
functions they ensured that their population produces acceptable pairs (Aldershof and
Carducci, 1999), that is pairs that have each other on their preference lists.

As far as the couples problem is concerned, they separated the applicants set into three
categories. Those who are single applicants, and two sets of men and women for the couples
that create a married couple, which then is matched to a hospital. More inequalities
(Aldershof and Carducci, 1999) were then introduced for this problem.

For fitness function, they simply created a function that adds the number of inequalities that
were satisfied. This helped them locate solutions for the couples problem where a stable
matching might not exist, but it is the best available solution might be located anyway, even
though it might lack stability. For a mating function they used cyclic crossover, which is
described in chapter 3.1.3.

As far as mutation was concerned, they chose to use a function that randomly or after finding
an unstable pair in a chromosome, performs the change. Mutation is of importance, because
simply changing a random number in the string may result in an illegal chromosome.

Their results were finding all matches in the SMP, and a student-optimal matching but no
hospital-optimal matching in the couples problem. Also, it appeared that singles get more
satisfactory results than couples, and couples had a larger probability of being unmatched in
the end of the algorithm, which can simply be explained by the fact that, it is easier to satisfy
the pre-requisites of a single than of two persons. They also emphasized on the need for an
algorithm with specific criteria for deciding among matchings.

The sex-fair problem was studied through the use of a GA (Nakamura, Onaga, Kyan and
Silva, 2002). The SMP was then translated into a graph problem as shown in the picture
below and the effectiveness of the GA was confirmed. The representation of the problem was
the same as before (Aldershof and Carducci, 1999).

21
 Figure 5: Graph representation of SMP

The sailor-boat problem has also been transformed into a GA representation (Garrett, et al.,
2005). The goal was to minimize the cost that the U.S. Navy must pay for making the
assignments, and also maximize the number of sailors that are assigned jobs. However, a
sailor can only apply for a specific set of jobs that he is qualified for. So creating an initial
population as well as applying mutation functions, is harder in this instance of the problem.
In order to bypass this problem, Garret et al. (2005) connected each sailor with the set of jobs
he is allowed to be assigned to, beforehand. That way it was assure that no illegitimate
matching would occur. They also applied a function for looking into the probability that a
position might be assigned twice. Uniform crossover (Sywerda, 1989) was used as a
reproduction function. Their research resulted in an algorithm that greatly improved the
selection process.

In the chapter 3 we present the initialization function, the reproduction function and the
fitness function, we have implemented with the help of MATLAB's genetic algorithm
optimization tool, as well as the standard Gale-Shapley algorithm (1962).

We tested our implemented algorithms on the following two problems: the original stable

22
marriage problem with random lists and the stable marriage problem with correlated lists
where 'beauty' affects the preferences of every participant. The reason why we chose the
correlated lists problem was because it gives a closer representation of a real life problem and
because as mentioned before this is the main contribution of this thesis. Preferences are never
totally random but there always more popular individuals.

3 Method
3.1 Representation

In chapter 3.1 we are going to present all the details about the functions we created for the
GA implementation.

3.1.1 Population

To begin with the standard bit-string representation of the first GAs is not particularly easy to
use in the SMP. Our choice of chromosome type was a vector of integers, who represent the
men matched to the women..For example, the vector [ 3, 1, 2 ] can be translated as the 1 st
woman is matched to the 3rd man, the 2nd woman to the 1st man and the 3rd woman to the 2nd
man.

3.1.2 Initialization

There are two parameters that the GA must have before we start our experiments. The
population vectors and the preference lists. The preference lists are created once and stay the
same through the iterations. We chose to create both these elements randomly. One might
argue that this would require a number of more iterations in the beginning until we receive
good results, unless we are lucky, but we can sidestep that with a good population size to
ensure we get more good results.

3.1.3 Crossover

The two crossover functions that we described in chapter 2.3.2 are not suitable for the SMP.
If we chose to implement any of the two we would come to disastrous results. Let us take for
example, the two chromosomes of length 8 [ 3, 8, 1, 2, 5, 7, 4, 6 ] and [ 2, 7, 8, 4, 6, 3, 5, 1 ].
If we used one-point crossover after position 3 we would come with the children: [ 2, 7, 8, 2,
5, 7, 4, 6 ] [ 3, 8, 1, 4, 6, 3, 5, 1 ], which contain the same number twice and thus destroy the
chromosomes rendering them into not valid representations of the SMP. In addition, if our
aim is to represent an instance with incomplete lists, we must make certain that our crossover
function not only creates appropriate descendants, but also that the matchings are acceptable.

The solution to the above problem is to use cyclic crossover (Aldershof and Carducci, 1999).
Cyclic crossover operates as follows: Two children are created, so that in each of them an
integer is placed only in the position it occupied in the parents. By accepting that rule,
acceptability of the matchings is assured. We randomly select, a position in the first parent.

23
We copy the integer x in that position in the same position in the child. Now, if we look at
1
the same position in the second parent, because of the way the function works, we must place
the integer x that lies there, who is called the opposing gene, in the position it has in the first
2
parent (since x has taken the place it had in parent 2). So we copy x in the position it has in
1 2
the 1st parent. Then we get a new opposing gene which we also copy in the position it holds
in the 1st parent. We continue in such fashion, until we find a number that already exists in the
child. The genes that have not been copied so far, we copy them into the 2 nd child (which has
been empty until now). We now have two half-empty chromosomes. We complete them with
the missing genes in the same position they have in the 2 nd parent. The whole process is better
described step-by-step, in figure 6.

Parent 1: [ 3, 2, 5, 1, 4 ]
Parent 2: [ 1, 3, 4, 2, 5 ]
starting point is position 2

Step Parents Children

1 Parent 1: [ 3, 2, 5, 1, 4 ] Child 1 : [ , 2, , , ]
Parent 2: [ 1, 3, 4, 2, 5 ] Child 2 : []

2 Parent 1: [ 3, 2, 5, 1, 4 ] Child 1 : [ 3, 2, , , ]
Parent 2: [ 1, 3, 4, 2, 5 ] Child 2 : []
3 Parent 1: [ 3, 2, 5, 1, 4 ] Child 1 : [ 3, 2, , 1, ]
Parent 2: [ 1, 3, 4, 2, 5 ] Child 2 : []
4 Parent 1: [ 3, 2, 5, 1, 4 ] Child 1 : [ 3, 2, , 1, ]
Parent 2: [ 1, 3, 4, 2, 5 ] Child 2 : [ , , 5, , 4 ]

Final children

Child 1 : [ 3, 2, 4, 1, 5 ]
Child 2 : [ 1, 3, 5, 2, 4 ]

Figure 6: Cyclic crossover example

Starting from position 2 in Parent 1, we place “2” into Child 1 in the second position (Step 1).
The corresponding gene is number “3” in Parent 2. It occupies position 1 in Parent 1 and we
copy it into Child 1 (Step 2). The next gene is “1”. After copying it into Child 1 (Step 3), we
have the next gene is “2” which already exists in Child 1, so we are obligated to stop. We
copy the remaining genes from Parent 1 into Child 2 (Step 4). Then we fill in the gaps in both
children with the genes in the positions they hold in Parent 2 (final children).

24
One disadvantage of this method is that, although it guarantees the reproduction of acceptable
children, is that the children due to the strict positioning rule, clones of the same chromosome
are created. Especially if the generating function creates chromosomes randomly. The use of
a slightly increased rate of mutation helps us avoid that danger and ensure diversity.

3.1.4 Mutation

Applying mutation has the same difficulties as crossover. Because of its random nature it has
the capability to disturb the stability and structure of the chromosome and make it
unacceptable. For our problem we chose to use two functions where one of them is chosen
randomly each time mutation is used. In the first function we randomly swap the positions of
5% of the elements of the vector, and and not just randomly change one gene, thus keeping
the chromosome acceptable. In the second function we locate all the unstable pairs in an
individual and then select one of them randomly and swap it with another random element.

3.1.5 Fitness function

The values of the fitness function depend on the kind of problem we wish to maximize. In
chapter 2.1.4 we mentioned how happiness is defined in the SMP.

The fitness function we considered at first, consisted of the sum of the number of stable pairs
plus the value of happiness. In the problem of maximizing the man or woman happiness we
used a function where each person's partner is given a value of their rank in the preference
list. That way first choices get the lowest values and last choices the highest. This is both
convenient and inconvenient, because the GA tries to solve any given problem by minimizing
the fitness function values. So for example, in the original problem the matchings with the
highest amount of stable matchings is the individual with the highest fitness value and
therefore it will be rejected.

In contrast, when we are interested about happiness scores, the individual with the lowest
happiness score is considered the most fit, and that matches perfectly our chosen
representation of happiness, which is according to formula (4). Individuals with their first
options like in optimal cases will get the best scores.

The same applies for egalitarian function costs. To solve the stable pairs representation
problem, we inverted the value ( matching with 9 stable matchings would get the score 2 and
vice versa). That way the stable pairs score must be minimized, exactly like the others. We
also added three constants S, H and E to weight the contribution of every optimality criterion
to the fitness value. In conclusion, our final fitness formula for one individual x was formula
(7):

F(x) = S*sta_pairs(x) + H*hap(x) +E*ehap(x) (7)

This function value contains stable pairs, happiness for every person, and egalitarian
happiness. The values A, B, C represent how much every criterion affects the final fitness

25
score. The more we increase the value of one of these three the more significant is any
increase or decrease of that criterion , meaning the fitness function focuses more on
minimizing that specific one. By setting S=H=E=1 we acknowledge that all three criteria play
the same role and we search for a solution which compromises for a stable matching that has
good happiness and egalitarian happiness values. By setting H=E=0 we can research only for
stable matchings. By setting E=0 we would obtain better happiness solution. Finally, for H=0
the algorithm returns a better egalitarian solution.

3.1.6 Implemented algorithms for comparison

We have implemented the Gale-Shapley algorithm (1962), as a means of comparison with our
own algorithm. It always yields the man-optimal solution, so we know beforehand that unless
the man-optimal solution is the same with the happiness solution it always gives us results
that are not happiness optimal. So we are quite sure that our GA implementation will
outperform the GSS.

3.2 Experiments
3.2.1 Algorithm settings

First, we took the Gale-Shapley algorithm and noted the produced results, and then ran the
GA algorithm experimenting with different sets of values for every setting. The quality of the
solutions was then compared and studied. Because of the nature of the GA, it is not
guaranteed that it always succeeds in finding all the possible stable matchings, but in most
cases it always finds at least one solution of good quality.

The matter of settings was not of great importance in our study. Our primary goal was to
show that the GA can deal with the SMP and its variants with ease and produce satisfying
results. We experimented with 3 different n sizes of 10, 25, 50 in both variations. For the
same n size we also experimented with different weight values for stability in contrast with
maximum happiness, to observe the differences in the solutions. We applied each
combination of S,H,E on 5 problems and then found the average value.

After that we wished to have a correlated lists example where with higher correlation so that
we could see the differences between the solutions depending on the correlation value.

The GA settings for every experiment had to be modified because for larger values of n we
need a larger population size and a larger iteration size so that we do not miss any solutions.
All the settings for our experiments are mentioned here on table 1:

26
 n 10 25 50
Population size 100 1000 4000
Number of 150 1000/13 20000/57 minutes
Iterations/Running time minutes
Selection function Stohastic Uniform
Crossover/Mutation fraction 0.1/0.9

Table 1: Genetic algorithm settings

The last setting states that 10% of the children come from crossover and 90% from mutation.

3.2.2 Original Stable marriage

We used a problem of small size to test our algorithm with an instance of the original problem
at first. We present here and comment the results for the problem of size n = 10 to see if our
algorithm manages to solve the typical problem and find all the stable matchings.

By cross-checking our results with the results of the GSS algorithm, Our goal was not to just
reach a stable matching, but by altering our fitness function and running more experiments
for different S, H and E values, to find solutions with better happiness and egalitarian
happiness values. That way we searched for results that would be sex-fair but also of high
happiness for both sexes, by sacrificing stability.

The reasons for choosing these values was to find out and compare the solutions for different
combinations of the criteria. We wished to use a function that maximizes more than one
criterion at the same time. We then examined how the absence of one or more of the criteria
affects the solutions. Our purpose was to compare the solutions where one of the S,H, or E
are equal to zero with the first setting where they are all present.

In tables 2,3 and 4, you can see the GSS results. Hap(m) represents the happiness of men,
hap(w) the happiness of women, hap(m+w) the overall happiness and ehap the egalitarian
happiness.

27
 Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
10 3.2 2.7 5.9 0.5
10 1.7 4.3 6 2.6
10 2.9 3.2 6.1 0.3
10 1.8 4.1 5.9 2.3
10 2 3.8 5.8 1.8
Average values
10 2.1 3.85 5.95 1.75

Table 2: GSS results for n =10 for SMP

Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap

25 3.8 6.56 10.36 2.76
25 2.88 7.8 10.68 4.92
25 2.24 10.36 12.6 8.12
25 4.2 5.48 9.68 1.28
25 2.44 8.08 10.52 5.64
Average values
25 2.94 7.93 10.87 4.99

Table 3: GSS results for n =25 for SMP

Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap

50 3.12 13.1 16.22 9.98
50 4.16 12.74 16.9 8.58
50 3.56 16.24 19.8 12.68
50 3.94 12.5 16.44 8.56
50 4.76 11.12 15.88 6.36
Average values
50 3.61 14.03 17.64 10.41

Table 4: GSS results for n =50 for SMP

In tables 5,6, and 7 we have the GA results with their average values for every S,H,E
combination that we experimented with for all the n sizes.

28
 S=1H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
10 3.2 2.7 5.9 0.5
10 2.6 2.1 4.7 0.5
10 2.9 3.2 6.1 0.3
9 3.1 3.3 6.4 0.2
10 3 2.5 5.5 0.5
Average values
9.8 2.96 2.76 5.72 0.4
S=1H=0E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
10 3.2 2.7 5.9 0.5
10 2.6 2.1 4.7 0.5
10 3.2 3 6.2 0.2
9 3.3 3.3 6.6 0
10 3 2.5 5.5 0.5
Average values
9.8 3.06 2.72 5.78 0.34
S=1H=1E=0
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
10 3.2 2.7 5.9 0.5
10 2.6 2.1 4.7 0.5
10 2.9 3.2 6.1 0.3
10 2.8 3.4 6.2 0.6
10 3.8 1.5 5.3 2.3
Average values
10 3.06 2.58 5.64 0.84
S=0H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
9 2.8 2.7 5.5 0.1
8 2 2.3 4.3 0.3
7 2.9 3 5.9 0.1
6 3 3.1 6.1 0.1
9 2.6 2.3 4.9 0.3
Average values
7.8 2.66 2.68 5.34 0.18
Table 5: Genetic Algorithm results for n =10 for original SMP

29
 S=1H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
24 5.2 4.56 9.76 0.64
24 4.88 4.24 9.12 0.64
23 5.32 5.24 10.56 0.08
23 4.72 4.48 9.2 0.24
23 4.6 5.16 9.76 0.56
Average values
23.4 4.94 4.74 9.68 0.43
S=1H=0E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
22 5.68 5.72 11.4 0.04
25 4.6 4.32 8.92 0.28
23 5.52 5.24 10.76 0.28
25 4.84 4.44 9.28 0.4
25 4.68 4.76 9.44 0.08
Average values
24 5.06 4.9 9.96 0.22
S=1H=1E=0
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
25 6.68 3.28 9.96 3.4
23 4.68 4.72 9.4 0.04
24 7.2 3.68 10.88 3.52
22 4.92 3.48 8.4 1.44
25 4.68 4.76 9.44 0.08
Average values
23.8 5.63 3.98 9.62 1.7
S=0H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
19 4.76 4.76 9.52 0
17 4.76 4.8 9.56 0.04
17 5.16 5.2 10.36 0.04
20 4.32 4.08 8.4 0.24
19 4.64 4.68 9.32 0.04
Average values
18.4 4.73 4.7 9.43 0.07
Table 6: Genetic Algorithm results for n =25 for original SMP

30
 S=1H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
41 8.32 8.36 16.68 0.04
38 8.44 8.56 17 0.12
41 9.08 8.88 17.96 0.2
43 7.52 7.24 14.76 0.28
41 9.1 8.98 18.08 0.12
Average values
40.8 8.49 8.4 16.9 0.09
S=1H=0E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
41 11.22 11.2 22.42 0.02
38 12.38 12.44 24.82 0.06
41 11.38 11.46 22.84 0.08
39 11.36 11.32 22.68 0.04
38 12.26 12.26 24.52 0
Average values
39.4 11.72 11.74 23.46 0.02
S=1H=1E=0
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
43 9.96 5.48 15.44 4.48
43 7.38 6.32 13.7 1.06
43 11.4 5.8 17.2 5.6
42 9.94 6.36 16.3 3.58
43 8.64 6.36 15 2.28
Average values
42.8 9.46 6.06 15.53 3.4
S=0H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
31 6.96 7.06 14.02 0.1
34 7.36 7.44 14.8 0.08
27 7.04 7.08 14.12 0.04
33 6.88 6.88 13.76 0
30 7.6 7.5 15.1 0.1
Average values
31 7.17 7.19 14.36 0.02
Table 7: Genetic Algorithm results for n =50 for original SMP

31
3.2.3 Stable Marriage with Correlated Lists

The major difference in the SMP with Correlated lists is in the way the preference lists are
created. We used formula (6) to produce the preference lists. You can see the GSS results on
tables 8,9, and 10. The value of correlation for this problem was U = 1.

Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap

10 3.2 2.7 5.9 0.5
10 1.7 4.3 6 2.6
10 2.9 3.2 6.1 0.3
10 1.8 4.1 5.9 2.3
10 2 3.8 5.8 1.8
Average values
10 2.1 3.85 5.95 1.75

Table 8: GSS results for n =10 for SM with Corr. lists

Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap

25 3.8 6.56 10.36 2.76
25 2.88 7.8 10.68 4.92
25 2.24 10.36 12.6 8.12
25 4.2 5.48 9.68 1.28
25 2.44 8.08 10.52 5.64
Average values
25 2.94 7.93 10.87 4.99

Table 9: GSS results for n =25 for SM with Corr. lists

Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap

50 50 14.12 16.92 31.04
50 50 14.84 12.94 27.78
50 50 14.66 14.44 29.1
50 50 13.86 13.58 27.44
50 50 13.76 14.42 28.18
Average values
50 14.54 14.77 29.31 0.23
Table 10: GSS results for n =50 for SM with Corr. lists

32
Here are our experimental results for the new problem on tables 11,12 and 13.

S=1H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
9 3.8 4.1 7.9 0.3
9 3.4 4.2 7.6 0.8
10 3.7 4 7.7 0.3
10 4.3 4.1 8.4 0.2
10 4.3 3.6 7.9 0.7
Average values
9.6 3.9 4 7.9 0.46
S=1H=0E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
9 4.6 4.4 9 0.2
9 3.9 4.5 8.4 0.6
10 3.7 4 7.7 0.3
10 4.3 4.1 8.4 0.2
10 4.3 3.6 7.9 0.7
Average values
9.6 4.16 4.12 8.28 0.4
S=1H=1E=0
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
9 3.8 4.1 7.9 0.3
10 2.8 4.7 7.5 1.9
10 3.7 4 7.7 0.3
10 3.5 4.6 8.1 1.1
10 4.3 3.6 7.9 0.7
Average values
9.8 3.62 4.2 7.82 0.86
S=0H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
6 3.8 3.8 7.2 0
5 3.7 3.7 7.4 0
7 3.5 3.5 7 0
7 3.8 3.7 7.5 0.1
6 3.4 3.4 6.8 0
Average values

33
 6.2 3.64 3.62 7.18 0.02

Table 11: Genetic Algorithm results for n =10 for SM with Corr. lists

S=1H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
21 7.28 7.28 14.56 0
25 8 7.8 15.8 0.2
25 8.4 8.24 16.64 0.16
21 8 7.92 15.92 0.08
24 8.08 7.76 15.84 0.32
Average values
23.2 7.95 7.8 15.75 0.15
S=1H=0E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
21 9.16 9.16 18.32 0
23 8.44 8.56 17 0.12
20 9 9 18 0
23 8.68 8.68 17.36 0
22 8.28 8.28 16.56 0
Average values
21.8 8.71 8.74 17.45 0.02
S=1H=1E=0
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
21 8.36 6.76 15.12 1.6
23 9.52 6.36 15.88 3.16
24 9.36 7.04 16.4 2.32
23 8.04 7.36 15.4 0.68
24 8.6 6.92 15.52 1.68
Average values
23 8.78 6.89 15.66 1.89
S=0H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
12 6.88 6.88 13.76 0
10 7.2 7.16 14.36 0.04
8 7.4 7.4 14.8 0
11 7.2 7.2 14.4 0

34
 11 7.12 7.08 14.2 0.04
Average values
10.4 7.16 7.14 14.3 0.02

Table 12: Genetic Algorithm results for n =25 for SM with Corr. lists

S=1H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
38 14.02 14.1 28.12 0.08
41 14.34 13.88 28.22 0.46
36 15.04 14.96 30 0.08
37 14.62 14.58 29.2 0.04
40 14.64 14.68 29.32 0.04
Average values
38.4 14.53 14.44 28.97 0.09
S=1H=0E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
37 18.14 18.14 36.28 0
31 19.12 19.12 38.24 0
34 17.46 17.46 34.92 0
34 18.58 18.58 37.16 0
30 19.86 19.86 39.72 0
Average values
33.2 18.63 18.63 37.26 0
S=1H=1E=0
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
38 15.26 12.96 28.22 2.3
37 15.36 11.36 26.72 4
36 15.06 13.08 28.14 1.98
38 14.26 12.88 27.14 1.38
37 12.94 14.6 27.54 1.66
Average values
37.2 14.58 12.98 27.55 1.6
S=0H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
13 12.7 12.7 25.4 0
20 12.6 12.6 25.2 0

35
 18 12.62 12.58 25.2 0.04
23 12.98 13 25.98 0.02
15 12.2 12.18 24.38 0.02
Average values
17.8 12.62 12.61 25.23 0.01

Table 13: Genetic Algorithm results for n =50 for SM with Corr. lists

In order to compare how the results change with the increase of correlation we have also run
experiments with the same settings for n = 25 and U = 1.5. Here are the results on table 14.

S=1H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
23 9.28 9.16 18.44 0.12
23 9.52 9.2 18.72 0.32
23 9.4 8.24 17.64 1.16
22 9 8.72 17.72 0.28
22 9.36 9.4 18.76 0.04
Average values
22.6 9.31 8.94 18.26 0.38
S=1H=0E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
24 9.32 9.4 18.72 0.08
24 9.96 9.52 19.48 0.44
22 9.96 9.92 19.88 0.04
21 10.56 10.56 21.12 0
22 9.6 9.6 19.2 0
Average values
22.6 9.88 9.8 19.68 0.11
S=1H=1E=0
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
23 9 8.32 17.32 0.68
23 10.72 8.48 19.2 2.24
22 9.88 7.52 17.4 2.36
22 9.4 8.28 17.68 1.12
23 8.52 9.52 18.04 1
Average values

36
 22.6 9.5 8.42 17.93 1.48
S=0H=1E=1
Stable pairs Hap(m) Hap(w) Hap(m +w) Ehap
10 8.04 8 16.04 0.04
10 8 8.04 16.04 0.04
14 8.36 8.36 16.72 0
12 8.6 8.6 17.2 0
10 8.4 8.4 16.8 0
Average values
11.2 8.28 8.28 16.56 0.02

Table 14: Genetic Algorithm results for correlated lists for n =25 with higher correlation

4 Analysis
4.1 Comparison of GA results with GSS results

To begin with we shall first compare the GSS with the GA results. On tables 15, 16 and 17,
we have the average GSS results and the average GA results for comparison for the original
problem.

Algorithm Stable pairs Hap(m + w) Ehap

GSS 10 5.95 1.75
S =1 H = 1 E = 1 9.8 5.72 0.4
S =1 H = 0 E = 1 9.8 5.78 0.34
S =1 H = 1 E = 0 10 5.64 0.84
S =0 H = 1 E = 1 7.8 5.34 0.18

Table 15: Average GSS and GA results n =10 for original SMP

Algorithm Stable pairs Hap(m + w) Ehap

GSS 25 10.87 4.99
S =1 H = 1 E = 1 23.4 9.68 0.43
S =1 H = 0 E = 1 24 9.96 0.22
S =1 H = 1 E = 0 23.8 9.62 1.7
S =0 H = 1 E = 1 18.4 9.43 0.07

Table 16: Average GSS and GA results n =25 for original SMP

37
 Algorithm Stable pairs Hap(m + w) Ehap
GSS 50 17.64 10.41
S =1 H = 1 E = 1 40.8 16.9 0.09
S =1 H = 0 E = 1 39.4 23.46 0.02
S =1 H = 1 E = 0 42.8 15.53 3.4
S =0 H = 1 E = 1 31 14.36 0.02

Table 17: Average GSS and GA results n =50 for original SMP

The purpose with our results was to minimize the values of happiness and egalitarian
happiness. Minimized values mean better results.

By taking a look at the results, if we look at the values for all 3 criteria we can see that the
GA results for happiness and egalitarian happiness are better compared to the GSS results.
For egalitarian happiness especially the results are very close to optimality which is 0. There
is however a small drop in the number of stable pairs. This goes in accordance with the
theory since every person tries to get as best a matching as possible and that is at the expense
of stability (Caldarelli and Capocci, 2000). This can also be seen at the last set of results for
all n where S=0, H=1, E=1. Actually, for this setting the results are much better as far as
happiness and egalitarian happiness are concerned. This is also the reason we used this
combination of settings even though it doesn't take into account the number of stable pairs in
the fitness function. On all other combinations of weight values, we can observe that we get a
high improvement of happiness and egalitarian happiness at the cost of a few stable pairs.
This proves that the GA can get better results with different properties if we use a fitness
function containing more than one criteria.

Moreover, if we compare the solutions to each other, we can see that when either H or E are
absent from the fitness function, we then get a greater improvement in the value of the
remaining criterion. This is quite evident from the results. That way we have either a
generally good solution for all criteria (S=H=E=1), or have a better happiness (E=0) or a
better egalitarian happiness solution (H=0).

It can be noticed in the results for n =50, that the number of stable pairs drops more than in
the previous experiments. That is due to the fact that the GA can not find all stable pairs in a
reasonable running time for higher problem sizes. However, in this research stability was not
considered more important than the other two criteria. It was considered more important to
get improved values for the other two criteria than finding a stable solution. Stability
restrictions can be relaxed in the real world also to satisfy other needs, like in the navy case
where the U.S. Navy can block a matching if they think it is unprofitable economically even
though the result would be stable. On tables 18, 19 and 20, we present the results for the
correlated lists problem.

38
 Algorithm Stable pairs Hap(m + w) Ehap
GSS 10 7.8 1
S =1 H = 1 E = 1 9.6 7.9 0.7
S =1 H = 0 E = 1 9.6 8.28 0.4
S =1 H = 1 E = 0 9.8 7.82 0.86
S =0 H = 1 E = 1 6.2 7.18 0.02

Table 18: Average GSS and GA results n =10 for SM with Corr. lists

Algorithm Stable pairs Hap(m + w) Ehap

GSS 25 16.26 1.3
S =1 H = 1 E = 1 23.2 15.75 0.15
S =1 H = 0 E = 1 21.8 17.45 0.02
S =1 H = 1 E = 0 23 15.66 1.89
S =0 H = 1 E = 1 10.4 14.3 0.02

Table 19: Average GSS and GA results n =25 for SM with Corr. lists

Algorithm Stable pairs Hap(m + w) Ehap

GSS 50 29.31 0.23
S =1 H = 1 E = 1 38.4 28.97 0.09
S =1 H = 0 E = 1 33.2 37.26 0
S =1 H = 1 E = 0 37.2 27.55 1.6
S =0 H = 1 E = 1 17.8 25.23 0.01

Table 20: Average GSS and GA results n =50 for SM with Corr. lists

As it is seen, all the above comments apply here as for the original problem. The GA
managed to find better solutions concerning happiness and egalitarian happiness by
sacrificing some stable pairs.

4.2 Comparison of GA results between the two variations

In the second part of our results' analysis we will compare the solutions between original
SMP and correlated lists SMP for both low and high correlation for n = 25. Here they are on
table 21.

39
 Criteria Stable pairs Hap(m + w) Ehap
Original SMP
S =1 H = 1 E = 1 23.4 9.68 0.43
S =1 H = 0 E = 1 24 9.96 0.22
S =1 H = 1 E = 0 23.8 9.62 1.7
S =0 H = 1 E = 1 18.4 9.43 0.07
Correlated SMP U = 1
S =1 H = 1 E = 1 23.2 15.75 0.15
S =1 H = 0 E = 1 21.8 17.45 0.02
S =1 H = 1 E = 0 23 15.66 1.89
S =0 H = 1 E = 1 10.4 14.3 0.02
Correlated SMP U = 1.5
S =1 H = 1 E = 1 22.6 18.26 0.38
S =1 H = 0 E = 1 22.6 19.68 0.11
S =1 H = 1 E = 0 22.6 17.93 1.48
S =0 H = 1 E = 1 11.2 16.56 0.02

Table 21: Comparison between SMP and SM with Corr. lists results

The first observation that can be made is that in the correlated results happiness is worse
compared to the SMP results, and also, for higher correlation it has almost a doubled value.
This is quite logical, since now everyone's preferences are more similar, so it is harder for
everyone to be just as satisfied as when the lists are created more randomly.

Secondly, egalitarian happiness in both correlated problems is better than in the original
problem. This was expected and according to theory (Caldarelli and Capocci, 2000), is due to
the fact that the men are going to be less satisfied now because they will get worse matches
than with random lists, and in addition, the more popular women will get better results since
they will receive more proposals. Those two facts combined lead to the improvement of the
egalitarian happiness value.

However, egalitarian happiness when U =1.5 is worse than what it is for U=1, when E=1.
This is attributed to the fact that there is a fewer number of stable matchings now. Since
everyone's preferences are more similar it is only logical that it is harder to find stable
matchings. So when we try to optimize egalitarian happiness along with stability, the results
are less fair because there are not so many stable or almost stable solutions to choose from.

5 Conclusions
In this chapter we show how our results are in accord with our objectives.

40
5.1 Objectives

The first objective we had set was answered with the help of literature study. We saw that
matching problems that are instances of SMP exist in important parts of society like in
education and in the military, or in technological areas like in router technology. We also saw
that most instances are not straightforward representations of the SMP.

Since it has been studied extensively, it is not surprising that a variety of algorithms exist for
the SMP. Most of them focus only on stable matchings. But the Navy example shows that
stable solutions are not always the best choice. And the human factor of satisfaction led
people to trying to find ways of fooling the system, to improve their situation.

So it is obvious, that different approaches to the problem would benefit the participants,
especially if they are willing to compromise on the matter of stability.

Let us not forget that in real world situations stability might not play such an important role,
otherwise people would choose to follow the SMP to find their partners. These facts
combined with the more realistic Correlated lists example, can lead us to the conclusion that
maximum egalitarian solutions of the problem might be more preferable than just stable ones.

That brings us to our second objective. We implemented the SMP and the SM with Correlated
lists, and we came up with a function that, through the use of weight constants it tried to
improve at least two criteria at the same time. Our results, were satisfying and yielded better
results than the GSS, but that was achieved by sacrificing a number of stable pairs. Especially
for egalitarian happiness many of our results were much closer to optimality than the GSS
results.

We also showed that correlation affects happiness in a negative way, while egalitarian
happiness improves for a small value of correlation, but then decreases as correlation
increases.

It is clear that the benefits of using GA implementations for solving the SMP do not lie on
finding optimal solutions, like in any polynomial algorithm, but on the combination of many
criteria that are important to the 'matchmaker', in order for him to create solutions that focus
on increasing the participants' happiness.

6 Summary
We have studied the stable marriage problem and have given a detailed description of its
variations and its real world instances. We have shown the implications and what changes
those real world instances have and what modifications were made by other researchers to
handle them. Afterwards, we created an genetic algorithm representation for the original
Stable Marriage Problem and also for an instance of the Stable Marriage Problem with
Correlated lists, something that has not been done before. Through the use of a genetic
algorithm representation we showed that we can get better happiness matches and especially

41
egalitarian happiness matches by relaxing the stability restrictions. We came to the conclusion
that while correlation leads to more fair solutions, if it increases highly, egalitarian happiness
starts to decrease.

The significance of the SMP is clearly proven by all its variations and applications in real life.
Along with that every algorithm that manages to improve the certain aspects of the solutions
and not just stability should be beneficial.

The GA manages to give an alternative point of view on the situation by providing with
solutions that can raise the system's happiness by holding stability on high levels.

7 Appendix

Gale Shapley Algorithm

function marriage = DS_SMP(n,listm,listw)
freem = (1:n);
statusw = zeros(n,1);
marriage = zeros(1,n);
while (~isempty(freem))
man = listm(freem(1),:);
for j = 1:length(man)
if (statusw(man(j)) == 1)
a = listw(man(j),:);
if (find(a == freem(1)) < find(a == marriage(man(j))))
freem(length(freem) + 1) = marriage(man(j));
marriage(man(j)) = freem(1);
freem(1) = [];
break
end
else
statusw(man(j)) = 1;
marriage(man(j)) = freem(1);
freem(1) = [];
break
end
end
end
return

Fitness Calculating Function

function ehap= marriage_fitness(x,listm,listw, mp)
[m n] = size(x);
scores = zeros(m,1); %number of stable pairs
satw = zeros(m,1);
satm = zeros(m,1);
hapm = zeros(m,1); %men happiness
hapw = zeros(m,1); %women happiness
hap = zeros(m,1); %total happiness
ehap = zeros(m,1); %egaliterian happiness

42
A = 1;
B = 1;
C = 1;
idx = 1:n;
es = 0;

for j = 1:m
p = x(j,:);
if A>0
for k = 1:n
w = listw(k,:);% for each womans list of preferences
i = 1;
s = 1;
while w(i) ~= p(k)
if (mp(k,i) < idx(listm(w(i),:) == (idx(p == w(i)))))
s=0;
break
end
i = i +1;
end
if s==1
scores(j)= scores(j) +1;
end
end
scores(j) = n +1 - scores(j);
end

if B>0 || C>0
for i = 1:n
sw = idx(listw(i,:) == p(i));
satw(j) = satw(j) + sw;
end

for i = 1:n
sm = idx(listm(p(i),:) == i);
satm(j) = satm(j) + sm;
end

hap(j) = (satw(j) + satm(j))/n;

hapm(j) = A*scores(j) + B*satm(j);
hapw(j) = A*scores(j) + B*satw(j);
es = (satm(j) - satw(j))/n;
if es<0
es = es*(-1);
end
end

ehap(j) = A*scores(j) + B*hap(j) + C*(es) ;

end

Initialization Function
function x = init(NVARS,marriagefnc,options)

43
 totalPopulationSize = sum(options.PopulationSize);
n = NVARS;
x = zeros(totalPopulationSize,n);

for i = 1:totalPopulationSize
x(i,:) = randperm(n);
end

Crossover Function
function xoverKids = crossover(parents,options,NVARS, ...
marriagefnc,ehap,x)

Kids = length(parents)/2 - 1;
xoverKids = zeros(Kids,NVARS);
index = 1;

for i=1:Kids

child1 = zeros(NVARS,1);
child2 = zeros(NVARS,1);
parent1 = x(parents(index),:);
parent2 = x(parents(index+1),:);
index = index + 2;

p = ceil((length(parent1) -1) * rand);

while isempty(find(child1 == parent1(p), 1))
child1(p) = parent1(p);
child2(p) = parent2(p);
p = find(parent1 == parent2(p),1);
end

p = find(child1 == 0);
for j = 1:length(p)
child1(p(j)) = parent2(p(j));
child2(p(j)) = parent1(p(j));
end

xoverKids(i,:) = child1;
xoverKids(i+1,:)= child2;

end

Mutation Function

function mutationChildren = mutate_permutation(parents,options,NVARS, ...

marriagefnc, state,ehap,x,listm,listw,mp)

idx = 1:NVARS;
mutationChildren = zeros(length(parents),NVARS);
for i=1:length(parents)
parent = x(parents(i),:);
child = parent;
d = rand;

44
 uns = zeros(NVARS,1);
q=1;
if (d > 0.5)
for k = 1:NVARS
w = listw(k,:);% for each womans list of preferences
j = 1;
s = 1;
while w(j) ~= parent(k)
if (mp(k,j)<idx(listm(w(j),:)==(idx(parent ==w(j)))))
s=0;
break
end
j = j +1;
end

if s==0
uns(q) = k;
q = q+1;
end
end
sp = find(uns);
if ~isempty(sp)
p1 = ceil(length(sp) * rand);
p2 = ceil(length(parent) * rand);
child(sp(p1)) = parent(p2);
child(p2) = parent(sp(p1));
end
else
for j = 1:ceil(NVARS/20)
par = child;
p = ceil(length(parent) * rand(1,2));
child(p(1)) = par(p(2));
child(p(2)) = par(p(1));
end
end
mutationChildren(i,:) = child;
end

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48
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