It is clear that 34,000 people are leaving their future in the hands of algorithms

ByMercy Health

In the United States, it is necessary to undergo medical training in order to obtain a doctor practice certificate, but as the number of students wishing to become doctors is increasing, the number of hospitals to be trained is limited, so fierce competition over training destinations There is a spread among students. Under such circumstances, we are conducting matching with the training program for medical students "National Resident Matching Program(The Match) "It seems that the medical students' medical training destination is decided by the algorithm.

Another 34,000 People Are About To Put Their Future In the Hands Of An Algorithm | FiveThirtyEight
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/another-34000-people-are-about-to-put-their-future-in-the-hands-of-an-algorithm/


Algorithms that determine the future of many medical students are Mr. Lloyd Sharplay and Mr. David Gale contributed by American mathematician and economist,Game theoryIt is based on. Although there are various applications in game theory, what is suitable for explaining what kind of theory is suitable for Mr. Sharpley and Mr. Gael announced in 1962 "Stable marriage problem".

In the "stable marriage problem", women choose the men who want to get married, then men choose to accept or refuse them. A woman who can not have a partner will choose another man who wants to get married again. At this time, the woman is OK even if he / she chooses a male who already has a partner, and even if the man has already received the proposal, he / she may refuse this and receive a new proposal. And repeat this until the woman without the partner becomes zero.

With this, it will not be paired with your favorite partner than the partner men and women are currently grouping with each other, so it will be a stable match.

ByMakena Zayle Gadient

When applying this to medical student medical training matching, "student" and "hospital of medicine training place" are replaced with women and men. Medical students go to the hospital and interview in place of the proposal, and the hospital side approves or rejects acceptance.

In 2014, 94.4% of medical students (4th graders) in the United States who participated in the Match program seemed to be able to find the hospital where they were trained. The number of medical students who participate in the program is as many as 34,000 people.

The following graph shows how difficult it is to find a medical training place in the US, with the vertical axis representing the medical field, the horizontal axis showing the proportion of the training place found, the red circle is the American The fourth grader of the university's medical school, Aomori shows other applicants.