Sommelier

Sommelier provides a solution to a variant of the Stable Marriage problem in mathematics. In this gem, the classical suitors are replaced with dishes from a restaurant menu and the brides-to-be are wines.

The Stable Marriage Problem is a mathematical problem that attempts to uniquely match a set of N items (classically male suitors) with another set of N items (classically females the suitors wish to marry).

This gem provides a variant of the Gale-Shapley algorithm. Gale-Shapley guarantees a complete matching (i.e. every suitor is paired with exactly one female and vice versa). Though this algorithm assumes every member of either group has a complete ranking of the other group. For large populations, this is not always practical.

The algorithm applied here has a few key differences from Gale-Shapley

1. The number of dishes and wines do not need to be equal.
2. Neither dishes nor wines need to have a complete ranking of the other set.
3. The rankings are determined by a symmetrical match score. For example, the match score for Eggplant and Cabernet is the same as for Cabernet and Eggplant. Though scores are relative, so Eggplant's match score for Cabernet may be its highest scoring match, but that same score may only be the fifth highest scoring match for Cabernet.

Because of these differences, not every dish or wine is guaranteed to be in the pairings map. Swapping the dish and wine sets in the match catalog alter the final set of pairings.

gem install tcollier-sommelier

require 'sommelier'
sommelier = Sommelier.new
sommelier.add_match('Asparagus', 'Pinot Noir', 0.366)
sommelier.add_match('Asparagus', 'Sauvignon Blanc', 0.453)
sommelier.add_match('Asparagus', 'Chardonnay', 0.245)
sommelier.add_match('Tofu', 'Rosé', 0.486)
sommelier.add_match('Tofu', 'Sauvignon Blanc', 0.304)
sommelier.add_match('Eggplant', 'Sauvignon Blanc', 0.299)
sommelier.add_match('Salmon', 'Sauvignon Blanc', 0.602)
puts sommelier.pairings
# {
#   "Salmon" => "Sauvignon Blanc",
#   "Tofu" => "Rosé",
#   "Asparagus" => "Pinot Noir"
# }

# Note: neither "Eggplant" nor "Chardonnay" were matched in the pairings map

This gem provides a rake task to apply the Sommelier algorithm to a CSV file. The file must have a header row and the columns are expected to be in the following order:

1. dish
2. wine
3. score

Note: the header row is simply ignored, so the columns can be named anything.

Any additional columns will be ignored.

# matches.csv
dish,wine,score
Asparagus,Pinot Noir,0.366
Asparagus,Sauvignon Blanc,0.453
Asparagus,Chardonnay,0.245
Tofu,Rosé,0.486
Tofu,Sauvignon Blanc,0.304
Eggplant,Sauvignon Blanc,0.299
Salmon,Sauvignon Blanc,0.602

rake sommelier:from_csv matches.csv
# Salmon => Sauvignon Blanc
# Tofu => Rosé
# Asparagus => Pinot Noir