The Feb 26 issue of Science News has a short article about new work on
the problem of "fair division". This is a protocol by which cooperating
parties can divide up good things or bad things fairly, such that no one
would prefer another person's allocation. These generalize the classic
"I cut and you choose" method for dividing a cake.
They have a web page with a Java applet that runs their protocol. You
can either use it to divide something nice (a cake), something bad (yard
maintenance chores), or also to allocate unsplittable objects, like
room assignments, where side payments can make things fair.
I've always been fascinated by these protocols because of the hope
that they could be a foundation for a more voluntary society. Not all
problems can be solved by them, but once you get to the point where a
group of people are forced to interact with each other, these protocols
lead to solutions where everybody is at least moderately happy.
The web page is http://www.math.hmc.edu/~su/fairdivision.
Hal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:04:30 MDT