Potential improvements to invite matching?

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by sangers

I think that the reducing the number of parties idea would better at larger schools where there are more PNM's or in earlier rounds. It would be far less noticable if XYX only had 9 parties instead of 10 or even 4 instead of 5. At smaller schools, it is very noticable. I know it's happened a few times at my college and while it does make the chapter members feel better because they X larger parties, as a Rho Chi, I know that the PNM's definately knew what had happened which defeated the purpose...

Does it completely defeat the purpose? I'm really asking, not being rhetorical. I have no idea.

I don't think you are ever going to be able to fool the PNMs about which groups most people consider more desirable, but if you made the experience of being at that chapter more like being at other chapters that round, wouldn't that help the chapter in the eyes of PNMs who didn't purely go by tent talk or what other PNMs thought. I know they are few and far between anyway, but a girl who goes to a sparsely attended party with lower overall energy has an "objectively" different experience at that chapter than a girl who although she knows the chapter has lower returns attends a full party with energy comparable to the others she attends.

[jwright25]

Originally Posted by AlphaGamUGAAlum

What determines what system a campus uses? Is there expensive software that the system would have bought that determines it, or does every campus have the choice of choosing priority ranking and flex list over accept/regret every year?

If you are asking what determines Priority over A/R, that is up to campus preference. An that preference is usually determined by history. If they've always done A/R, it is harder to convince them to go to Priority. Technically you don't have to have software for either - it can be done by hand. But it is very time consuming to match invites - even for schools that have only 4 or 5 chapters. There is currently a (slight) trend toward Priority, and those that are switching to Priority over A/R are doing so in order to utilize Flex and because it is easier for the RFM Specialist to consider current year chapter performance when working on invitation matching.

To my knowledge, there are three options out there for recruitment software - D&D, Innova, and ICS. I've never used Innova, but as far as being user-friendly, ICS is fabulous. It is all online, so chapters can submit lists at any time from anywhere rather than having to hand carry a list or a disk to the Greek office. Same for receiving invitation lists.

Technically you could do the Flex if you were matching invites by hand, but it would be a lot more back-and-forth and time. Luckily there aren't many campuses still doing that. I don't recall the cost of ICS right offhand, but I do know that several smaller systems have started using it without breaking the bank.

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by jwright25

If you are asking what determines Priority over A/R, that is up to campus preference. An that preference is usually determined by history. If they've always done A/R, it is harder to convince them to go to Priority. Technically you don't have to have software for either - it can be done by hand. But it is very time consuming to match invites - even for schools that have only 4 or 5 chapters. There is currently a (slight) trend toward Priority, and those that are switching to Priority over A/R are doing so in order to utilize Flex and because it is easier for the RFM Specialist to consider current year chapter performance when working on invitation matching.

To my knowledge, there are three options out there for recruitment software - D&D, Innova, and ICS. I've never used Innova, but as far as being user-friendly, ICS is fabulous. It is all online, so chapters can submit lists at any time from anywhere rather than having to hand carry a list or a disk to the Greek office. Same for receiving invitation lists.

Technically you could do the Flex if you were matching invites by hand, but it would be a lot more back-and-forth and time. Luckily there aren't many campuses still doing that. I don't recall the cost of ICS right offhand, but I do know that several smaller systems have started using it without breaking the bank.

Thank you. I was mainly wondering if campuses basically decided what to use and paid for it each year (maybe through a contract with a recruitment management service?) or if it was an expensive one time purchase that then drove the decision for several years.

[jwright25]

Originally Posted by AlphaGamUGAAlum

Thank you. I was mainly wondering if campuses basically decided what to use and paid for it each year (maybe through a contract with a recruitment management service?) or if it was an expensive one time purchase that then drove the decision for several years.

Ahhh. I see what you are saying. I haven't been on the purchasing end myself, but I THINK that for ICS, it is a year-to-year thing. A campus Greek Advisor might know more details.

[sunnydebs]

We used the ICS flex list last year and it worked well. My only qualm is that after voting on so many girls, the sisters get tired when it comes to pick the flex list and it's kind of time-consuming to rank the flex list and you may be cutting it close to when you have to turn in your votes. I think your panhellenic council has to decide if the flex list approach is best for your recruitment. If many of the chapters have had issues with fluctuating return rates over the last few years, it may be a good idea to switch to the flex list system.

One more thing: for our preference round, we actually requested one MORE party because we wanted there to be fewer PNMs in the room. It made it easier to match our sisters with the girls for conversations!

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Okay, I'm bumping an old thread with another math question. My understanding is that, at a large recruitment using RFM, bid matching is run several times with different quotas, and the one that results in the highest number of women placed is used. That, is, they put 85 into the computer, see what happens, put 86 into the computer, see what happens, etc.

The question is, when there are QA's, what difference does it make? Do the ultimate Deciders of Quota look at how many women match to their first choice under each scenario, or just how many match at all? Do they consider how many chapters make quota under each scenario, too?

I was thinking about this as a multi-objective optimization problem. One objective is to maximize parity, and the other is to maximize PNM happiness. Trying to place the maximum number of women prior to QA's doesn't seem to accomplish either one.

[Titchou]

They look at all of it. It's not an either/or thing. So, it could go either way at any given time. The goal is to place the most women in the highest placement possible. So they try to determine what that is.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by Titchou

They look at all of it. It's not an either/or thing. So, it could go either way at any given time. The goal is to place the most women in the highest placement possible. So they try to determine what that is.

Okay, my question was mainly around whether they looked at WHERE women placed.

I'm always interested in the pieces done by hand, rather than automated, and why/how they are done by hand. In this case, automation would be an Integer Program (IP) something like:

Maximize "Total PNM happiness"
by changing the variable "quota"
subject to "all chapters make quota"

Basically, you'd come up with some sort of measure of PNM happiness, like 3 points for a woman placed in her first choice, 2 for a woman placed in her second choice, and one for a woman placed in her third choice. Then each time bid matching was run for a different value of quota, a value for Total PNM happiness could be calculated, and there'd be a "best" value of quota.

I'm not sure that "all chapters make quota" would be a hard constraint, though, as we know that won't happen at all on some campuses. Rather, I'd adjust the objective function to call it something like "CPH Strength" and define it as "Total PNM happiness - missed quota penalty," i.e. for each chapter not making quota, we'd subtract some quantity from the total PNM happiness.

Of course, you can't *really* just hand it over to the computer...who decides if a PNM in her first choice is three times happier than in her third choice, or four times? Maybe the points should be 4-2-1 or 6-3-1 instead of 3-2-1.

Even if someone were to write the program and hand it over to the computer during bid matching, the fact remains that the design would require a huge amount of up-front subjective judgment calls. In any case, I think it's fun to think about, and a good example of why real-world modeling is very difficult.

I think I'd make missed quota a huge penalty, because that way, if a chapter was NEVER going to make quota, it would apply to every scenario, and wouldn't make a difference, but if a chapter makes quota under some scenarios and not others, it would automatically avoid the latter. But then again, does it matter if a chapter misses quota by one instead of making quota? Then why penalize by number of chapters missing quota rather than the number of women they are below quota?

[DubaiSis]

At a school that has reached parity (more or less), I think weighting QA's to rushee preference would be an excellent idea (while still trying to retain something resembling parity). But for schools where there are 1 or 2 well below the rest, the sad but truth is those chapters are going to get the emphasis. As far as I know, the weighting metric is determined differently at each school, so this may actually be how it works. I have not been invited behind the curtain as yet, so I don't know how it really works at one or many schools.

Other than that, you made my head hurt.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by DubaiSis

At a school that has reached parity (more or less), I think weighting QA's to rushee preference would be an excellent idea (while still trying to retain something resembling parity). But for schools where there are 1 or 2 well below the rest, the sad but truth is those chapters are going to get the emphasis. As far as I know, the weighting metric is determined differently at each school, so this may actually be how it works. I have not been invited behind the curtain as yet, so I don't know how it really works at one or many schools.

Other than that, you made my head hurt.

Oh! I hadn't even gotten into placing QA's yet...I was still working on determining quota. But yes, that's a good point, QA placement is another thing done by hand.

[Titchou]

I'm not a computer expert nor a math whiz. That being said, whether it is hand matching or computer matching, it always matches the woman to the chapter not the chapter to the woman. One of our members here posted the latest version of the NPC Green Book (MOI) a day or so ago and I strongly recommend that all of you take a look at it.(It's a sticky near the top of the page). Most of your concerns will be addressed. They have a method for adjusting the number of parties. The Flex List adds women if need be. The MOI lists things a computer program should do and duplicating the hand process is one of them. For those of you who have never done hand matching, the PNMs name is called with her first choice. If it is a match on that group's first list (or remaining women available which equals quota), then she is matched to that group. If she isn't on that list, then her card is set aside until all are gone thru and then they start over to see if her number has come up. And this is repeated over and over until there is gridlock - no one is matched after going all the way thru the remaining cards one full time. Then the method to break gridlock is implemented. The computer programs must adhere to this as well.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by Titchou

I'm not a computer expert nor a math whiz. That being said, whether it is hand matching or computer matching, it always matches the woman to the chapter not the chapter to the woman. One of our members here posted the latest version of the NPC Green Book (MOI) a day or so ago and I strongly recommend that all of you take a look at it.(It's a sticky near the top of the page). Most of your concerns will be addressed. They have a method for adjusting the number of parties. The Flex List adds women if need be. The MOI lists things a computer program should do and duplicating the hand process is one of them. For those of you who have never done hand matching, the PNMs name is called with her first choice. If it is a match on that group's first list (or remaining women available which equals quota), then she is matched to that group. If she isn't on that list, then her card is set aside until all are gone thru and then they start over to see if her number has come up. And this is repeated over and over until there is gridlock - no one is matched after going all the way thru the remaining cards one full time. Then the method to break gridlock is implemented. The computer programs must adhere to this as well.

I'm not talking about the matching itself. I'm talking about the fact that the matching is run more than once, with several different quotas, and then the "best" one is chosen.

So, there are two things that are still done more or less by hand, choosing quota and placing QA's. I'm just talking through why that stuff isn't automated. Either the MOI has rules for it, in which case it can be automated, or these things are really subjective subject to the GA's whim.

[DubaiSis]

My understanding is that IS automated.

[Titchou]

It is automated. The computer places the QAs based on matching the girl to the group in the same way as quota. If the numbers look skewed, they can run it with a different quota. But it's nothing but a math formula. How many times will 10 chapters go into 287 women with the smallest remainder. But stop trying to make it something it isn't. And the school's assigned RFM specialist has to sign off on the final match anyway. So she can override the FSA if she thinks something hinky is going on.

[DeltaBetaBaby]

Originally Posted by Titchou

It is automated. The computer places the QAs based on matching the girl to the group in the same way as quota. If the numbers look skewed, they can run it with a different quota. But it's nothing but a math formula. How many times will 10 chapters go into 287 women with the smallest remainder. But stop trying to make it something it isn't. And the school's assigned RFM specialist has to sign off on the final match anyway. So she can override the FSA if she thinks something hinky is going on.

Thanks for the info. My intention is not to imply that anyone is intentionally screwing it up or going in with an agenda, I have just heard many different things about how QA's are placed. The only reason for the bump is that I enjoy getting into the really nitty gritty details of what the computer can and cannot do vs. what requires some kind of subjective human judgement.