Introduction

This package exports a single function called create_matching which can be used to create matchings for recurring meetings from a varying but overlapping set of members. In particular, the internal algorithm makes sure that matchings at different meetings are mixed.

Installation

The package can be installed via pip. To do so, type the following commands in your favorite terminal emulator:

$ pip install randomgroups

Usage

The code expects a data file containing id, name, and joins columns, where id is used internally to keep track of matchings, name is a str column which is used when creating the human-readable output and joins is a {0, 1} column which denotes if the given individual wants to join the current meeting. An example file is given here names.csv. Note that the rows in id column have to be unique. If new individuals wish to be added these individuals simply need to be appended to the data file, the code will update all further files automatically.

First Time Use:

If no prior matchings have been recorded you can create a new set of groups by running the following lines in a Python shell

from randomgroups import create_matching

names_path = "/path/to/names.csv"
output_path = "/path/to/folder/where/to/store/output/data"

create_matching(
    names_path=names_path,
    output_path=output_path,
    min_size=2,
)

Here the argument min_size denotes the minimum number of members in a group. In the folder output_path two files will be created. One, matchings.txt which contain the named matchings for the current meeting, and second, matchings_history.csv which contains information on matchings. The latter file needs to be saved since it will be used in subsequent function calls. Example files are given here: matching.txt, matchings_history.csv.

Remark: If the files names.csv is a Google sheet which is updated on a regular basis it can be sensible not to download the file but to provide a link to the sheet directly. In the case with Google sheets this is easily done by opening the Google sheet and then publishing the document in the file options. This creates a link to a downloadable csv file which updates when the Google sheet is updated. This URL can then be passed to names_path.

Subsequent Usage:

Once the file matchings_history.csv has been created one can further pass the path of this file to the function call via matchings_history_path=.... The previous matchings will then influence new group formations.

Assortative Matching:

The 'status' column in the names csv-file allows one to distinguish between different statuses like 'student' or 'faculty'. One can then use the 'wants_mixing' column to specify whether an individual wants to be mixed with people from another group. This is not absolute. A float parameter ("mixing_multiplier") can be specified. If this parameter is very high it will be less likely that people with a different status and which do not want to mix are mixed. In fact, a negative value will make it more likely that people with a different status are mixed. Multiple status columns can be used, e.g., "status", "status2", etc. and a dict of mixing multipliers can be passed to get different mixing multipliers for different status columns.

Contributing

If you want to contribute to this repository feel free to open a pull request or submit an issue. You can also simply contact me, see here.