ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

House allocation problem

Have you ever been to a party or a sleepover with your friends? Imagine that you and your friends have a big house where you can all stay together. But, you need to decide who will sleep in which room so that everyone is happy and comfortable.

This is a bit like the house allocation problem. It's a problem that mathematicians and computer scientists try to solve when they want to allocate houses or rooms to a group of people.

Here’s how it works:

Suppose there are 6 friends and 6 rooms in the house. But each friend has different preferences of rooms. For example, Mira likes the room with the garden view and Moh likes the room with big windows. But, Tom doesn't have any preference and is happy to stay in any room.

So, how can we allocate rooms to our friends in a way that everyone gets a room they like? This is where we use mathematics.

We can assign points to each room based on how much they like it. For example, the room with the garden view can get 10 points, the room with the big windows can get 8 points, and so on.

Then, we give each of our friends a list of preferences for the order of rooms they would like to stay in.

After that, we use an algorithm to calculate the best allocation of rooms. The algorithm tries to maximize the total points that our friends get based on their preferences.

Once the algorithm calculates the optimal solution, we can allocate the rooms to our friends. That way, everyone will be happy with their room.

In summary, the house allocation problem is all about using math and computer algorithms to figure out the best way to allocate rooms based on people's preferences. It's like a fun game where everyone wins!