Want to fairly split rent or share credit? CMU's got a web
Source: Justine Coyne
For decades, the "I cut, you choose" method has been the go-to solution for dividing things fairly, but computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University are working toward a more math-centric method for solving these dilemmas.
With Spliddit.org, researchers have set up a website that offers "provably fair" solutions to everyday issues. The site uses mathematical and theoretical approaches to help with everything from splitting rent and dividing goods to apportioning credit for a project.
"People have worked hard to solve these problems in provably fair ways," Ariel Procaccia, an assistant professor of computer science who leads the Spliddit project, said in a statement. "It's sort of surprising that nobody has previously implemented these algorithms so that they could be used by society at large."
Take the issue of dividing rent. Spliddit goes beyond dividing the monthly rent by the number of roommates. Instead, the site uses a method based on work by researchers at Duke University and Boston College that includes asking each roommate to specify how much each bedroom is worth to them, using criteria such as room size, closet space, and the number of windows.
The algorithm then recommends who should occupy which room, and how much each should pay.
For dividing goods, such as inheritances or other items, the website computes each participant's "maximum" share, which is a lower boundary for what the participant would receive if he were to divide the good into bundles and the other participants could choose their bundles first. In many cases, the method is able to give each participant their maximum share, but only guarantees them two-thirds of the maximum share, according to CMU.
The project was supported by the National Science Foundation and Amazon.
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