The Connection between Dwarf-Tossing and an Economics Nobel
In case you missed it, Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley just won the 2012 Economics Nobel (ok, technically the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economics Sciences). Shapley you should know from the Stable Marriage Problem w/ a nifty example here . TL;DR --> " Each person has a preference list of the folks of the opposite gender. A pair of people of opposite genders that like each other better than their respective spouses is an instability. How can we pair up all the folks so there are no such instabilities? " Al Roth (blog here ), extended this into all sorts of areas, and in particular in the world of organ trading, horse meat, and other such "repugnant" markets. The highpoint - IMHO is his glorious paper "Repugnance as a constraint on markets " (go read it), which includes a section on dwarf-tossing. Yup. Dwarf-tossing . To quote To clarify ideas about repugnance, it may be helpful to look at a relatively uncomplicated case, in which little...