This isn't exactly a statistics question, but at least one possible solution might employ a statistics tool.
Here's the problem: In order to assign roommates, admitted freshmen are given a list of ten characteristics and asked to rank-order their preferences from 1 for most important to 10 for least important. The objective is to match roommates' interests and preferences as closely as possible. Whatever matching algorithm is used, it will be run independently for the four combinations of male smokers, female smokers, male non-smokers, and female non-smokers. So, for each student we would expect a permutation of the integers from 1 to 10, and if any two students submitted the same permutation, they'd be a perfect match. My initial reaction is to calculate pair-wise correlation coefficients and then sort through the correlation matrix to make roommate pairings based on the magnitude (positive) of r, but I'm sure there must be other approaches. Any comments, ideas, or suggestions would be welcome. TIA, Richard __________________________________ Richard G. Seymann, Ph.D. Professor of Statistics Director of the Westover Honors Program Director of Academic Assessment Lynchburg College, Lynchburg, VA 24501 Phone: (434)544-8258, Fax: (434)544-8658 . . ================================================================= Instructions for joining and leaving this list, remarks about the problem of INAPPROPRIATE MESSAGES, and archives are available at: . http://jse.stat.ncsu.edu/ . =================================================================
