Pen and Paper
Pen and Paper uses the transportation algorithm to assign alumni to prospective students based on their compatibility and attributes of the student. These alumni encourage their assigned prospective students to attend university with written letters. Read a report about how and why we completed this project here. The main functional changes that were added since this report was written are:
- The geographic proximity characteristic is determined by the distance between zip codes and not just the first two digits of the zip codes.
- The use of .csv files intead of .txt files.
- Better user-friendly design of the input and output data.
To Run
- Download and unzip this Github repository.
- Install Java.
- Install GLPK which contains GLPSOL.
- Create a survey in this style and send to alumni volunteers. Once the volunteers have submitted their answers, download their responses as a .csv file, rename that file to Alumni Data.csv, and place it in the confidential_data folder. Be sure to remove all duplicates and unfinished forms from this file.
- If applicable, edit Majors List.csv and Scholarship List.csv in open_data.
- Insert correctly formatted Student Data.csv in confidential_data. Here is what each column should contain:
| Ref | Gender | 1st Gen | Region | Scholarship Level | Conversion Predictor | Postal | Academic Interest | Extracurricular Interest |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| unique identifier | M or F for gender identity (for gendered sports matching) | 1 or blank for 1st generation student status | string of student's location (TX if in state status) | items in Scholarship List.csv | predicted enrollment (1 is more likely and 6 is less likely) | zip code | comma separated list of items in Majors List.csv | comma separated strings |
Here is an example of the format of Student Data.csv:
To change a .xlsx file to a .csv file, open Excel, go to File, Save As, then save with the "CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited)(*.csv)" extension.
- With a Windows operating system, double-click Start.bat and follow the instruction prompts. Other operating systems will require the user to manually execute OperationPenAndPaper.jar in the command line.
- Retrieve results in the results folder.
Interpreting Results
This program creates four output files to interpret.
- Category Analysis.csv: Provides statistics on the matchings that this program made.
- Final Output.csv: Provides the matchings between students and alumni. Each matching is listed with the reason that matching was made and, if applicable, the student and alumni information that attributed to that matching.
- Match Scores.csv: A matrix showing all match scores between each alumnus and student. A match score is the value of an assignment of an alumnus to student.
- Students Lacking Letters.csv: A list of all students who did not receive letters, sorted by their average match score.
Acknowledgements
Pen and Paper was developed for the Fall 2018 Operations Research course and Spring 2019 Operations Research in Practive independent study at Southwestern Univeristy. Dr. Barbara Anthony's advised this project. This project was completed with help from Daniel Maldonaldo, Katie Dyo, Alexander Hoffman, and Greg O'brien.