Matched Dispatching in Randomized Settings

Abstract

This paper examines some problems of matched dispatching in some different random settings. The context of presentation is that of a reality show with a lineup of the participants, and according to some probabilistic selection rule, some participants are pairwise matched to teams while some are excluded. We consider mainly two cases of induced randomness, one based on random ordering of participants, and one based on coin-flipping, and consider both linear and circular lineups. Questions of fairness are discussed, and some alternative schemes are examined.