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School choice : a discrete optimization approach

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center, May, 2020 / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 32-34). / An equitable and flexible mechanism for assigning students to schools is a major concern for many school districts. The school a student attends dramatically impacts the quality of education, access to resources, family and neighborhood cohesion, and transportation costs. Facing this intricate optimization problem, school districts often utilize to stable-matching techniques which only produce stable matchings that do not incorporate these different objectives; this can be expensive and inequitable. We present a new optimization model for the Stable Matching (SM) school choice problem which relies on an algorithm we call Price-Costs-Flexibility-and- Fairness (PCF2). Our model leverages techniques to balance competing objectives using mixed-integer optimization methods. We explore the trade-offs between stability, costs, and preferences and show that, surprisingly, there are stable solutions that decrease transportation costs by 8-17% over the Gale-Shapley solution. / by Justin W. Graham. / S.M. / S.M. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, Operations Research Center

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:MIT/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/127294
Date January 2020
CreatorsGraham, Justin W.
ContributorsDimitris Bertsimas., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Operations Research Center., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Operations Research Center
PublisherMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Source SetsM.I.T. Theses and Dissertation
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Format34 pages, application/pdf
RightsMIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided., http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

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