New Website Offers Provably Fair Solutions To Everyday Problems

An anonymous reader writes Carnegie Mellon researchers have just launched Spliddit, a website that offers methods for helping people split rent, divide goods, and share credit. The novelty is that these methods are all "provably fair": there are mathematical proofs showing that each algorithm on the site provides rigorous fairness guarantees. For example, the method for splitting rent is guaranteed to be envy free: the assignment of rooms and division of rent is such that a housemate would never want to swap places with another housemate. All it takes is a pair of siblings to prove that there's no such thing as "provably fair," non-mathematically.

Comments

It doesn't work

[wcrowe]

I keep telling my dogs that the way that Spliddit divvies up the expenses is PROVABLY FAIR, but all they do is look at me blankly, cocking their heads to one side. Damn dogs. I never see a dime out of either of them.

Re:It doesn't work

[Quirkz]

Hell, if you give two children identical copies of the same color crayon, one will still want what the other has.

Re:won't work with my kids

[Mr D from 63]

Of course, for the splitting rent, the most fair approach is for the wealthiest roommate to pay more.