colonel@gloria.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman) (06/20/85)
[You want HOW MANY wives?] > In all the responses for this discussion, I have yet > to read anything about the differences in how the Arranged > Marriage System treats the male and the female participants. > The system seems to be heavily weighted in favor of the > males (sons) as are most things. A son brings a wife into > the family while the daughter 'leaves' to join her husband's > family. The girl's family may for a long time try to > 'unload' her to just about anyone. The tradition of > subservience would more likely lead the girls to accept the > 'match' over the son who may feel that he could get better. There's a theorem in mathematics, due (I think) to J. H. Conway. Assume that everybody has a lineally ordered list of prospective marriage partners. Define a "stable" matching as a matching in which no two people would be happier married to each other than to the people they're married to. One can distinguish two stable matchings among the others: the men- oriented matching, where each man gets his best available choice, and the women-oriented matching, where each woman gets her best available choice. These are always distinct, unless there is only one stable matching! -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel