Comment by csense | Hacker News Reader

Comment by csense | Hacker News Reader

Fascinating article.

The obvious research question: Is there an assignment system where the best strategy is to list your true preferences, and is Pareto efficient (no win/win trading of assignment is possible)?

What's wrong with simply randomizing the list of students, then walking the randomized list and giving each student his/her highest-ranked school that hasn't yet been filled by the assignment of students higher on the list?

Does some variant of Arrow's impossibility theorem [1] apply to this situation?

It might also shed light on the causes and dynamics of poverty to figure out the exact causal mechanism by which "students from poorer neighborhoods make more strategic mistakes."

Is poor strategic decision-making ability a cause of poverty (the poor are poor because they don't make smart strategic decisions about money and life choices)? Or is it an effect of poverty (having a single parent or parents working multiple jobs means less intellectual stimulation and help with homework, not being able to afford nutritious food or have time to cook it causes poor nutrition which affects brain development, etc., which leads to lower general intelligence and strategic thinking ability)?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow%27s_impossibility_theore...

> "students from poorer neighborhoods make more strategic mistakes."

It's likely simpler than you guess, and not because poorer people are dumber (I'm not even sure why you assumed that making strategic mistakes in college planning is caused by low intelligence): students in poorer neighborhoods aren't plugged into the privilege networks, that tell them which are the best schools to apply to.

But having wrong preferences in the first place isn't the kind of strategic mistake they're talking about.

It's thinking of the type "my 1st preference is school A, but I probably won't get in, so I'll say my preference is B so that I get that at least" in cases where they would have got into A if they had stated it as their #1.

Students in poorer neighbourhoods don't have internet in the Netherlands?

I'm sure there are effects like that at play but I think more directly, the rich can afford to pay someone to study the system and make a personalized recommendation, while the poor simply can't afford the same caliber of help, if they're even able to afford help.

Access to SAT test prep for college admissions has the same issues.

I think the article explains this?

"The year after, in 2016, the Amsterdam school boards switched to the single-DA variant of the mechanism. With this variant, striking situations like those where students get a place at each other’s top choice school can only occur when a student has priority at a school."

The issue with this is that we don't want to screw over someone fully.

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