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I'm working on a PHP algorithm to match compatibility based on responses to questions in a form.

In this situation, user A and user B are asked the same exact questions. Let's say these are a few of the questions:

Cleanliness
    No preference
    Somewhat Clean
    Tidy but cluttered
    Strictly organized


Person B Cleanliness Preference
    Whatever
    Can't be too different
    Must Match

Room Temperature
    Cold
    Comfortable
    Hot

Now there would be more questions, but it continues on this similar trend. There are questions about you specifically, and then there are questions that pertain to Person B (and how you want them to respond)

I want the algorithm to match people based on their similarity in responses, and obviously the conditional statements for person B will add more weight to their answers to those questions.

I thought maybe of assigning a point value to each answer, but I'm still not sure how I'd make that work.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

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3 Answers 3

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Line up all your "fields" you are asking your users in the questionnaire. Either make your ranges very limited (always, sometimes, never) and assign them constant values like 1, 2, 3. Loop through everyone to match responses together. Generate a list of potential compatible matches - which you can then sort as your application demands.

Sample

define('FEMALE', 0);
define('MALE', 1);

$user1 = array(
 'name' => 'John Doe',
 'gender' => MALE,
 'interseted_in' => FEMALE,
 'cleanliness' => 3,
// etc
);

$potentials = array();
foreach($users as $u)
{
  if($user['gender'] != $user1['interested_in'])
  {
    continue;
  }

  // More checking
  // ...
  // At the end of checking, add to the potentials.
  $potentials[] = $u;
}
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4 Comments

Thanks for the code, this is interesting. I'm still a bit confused on what this code is doing, perhaps you can explain? I see that $user1 is an array based on the responses that user1 has. However, the foreach loop adds a new variable ($users) which isn't defined anywhere. What would that be?
users is all the users from the db i believe. Probably just using it as an example. So you could do a query for whatever gender they are interested in. Get a list of users that fit that criteria and then further match them with someone else.
Sorry about that, I should have given a little more context. Matt is correct - $users should come from the database somehow, and it's an array of arrays, the deepest array being the actual user data who's structure reflects that of $user1 which I defined.
Thanks. I recoded this a bit and it seems to be precisely what I need.
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I would look into how okcupid does matching: http://www.okcupid.com/faaaq

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1 Comment

I actually looked into this. The only problem I found was that I don't have questions that ask the preference for the other person's preference on all answers, so I feel like the point value would be incorrect. I only ask that for a few, like sleeping habits and housekeeping.
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A point value system COULD work. Here is my thinking:

For each value they answer a question for, that answer gets an ID in the database. When you are trying to "match" or "compare" two people, you add up how many answers they have in common by comparing the answer IDs. Then its up to you to determine if they have enough in common.. For example, if they have 8/10 answers in common, they could be a match. 

mysql> SELECT * FROM users LIMIT 1;
+----+---------------+
| id | name          |
+----+---------------+
|  1 | Dalton Conley |
+----+---------------+

mysql> SELECT * FROM questions;
+----+--------------------------+
| id | value                    |
+----+--------------------------+
|  1 | Do you like to program?  |
+----+--------------------------+

mysql> SELECT * FROM answers;
+----+-------------+-------+
| id | question_id | value |
+----+-------------+-------+
|  1 |           1 | yes   |
|  2 |           1 | no    |
+----+-------------+-------+

mysql> SELECT * FROM user_answers;
+---------+-------------+-----------+
| user_id | question_id | answer_id |
+---------+-------------+-----------+
|       1 |           1 |         2 |
+---------+-------------+-----------+
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9 Comments

I'm not sure I fully understand. What do you mean by an ID in the database? Right now I have a "preferences" table, with columns like "cleanliness","cleanliness_preference","room_temperature" (varchar) which are populated with whatever drop-down option they select.
Have all of your questions in a table to their own. Then have another table for answers: answer_id, question_id, value .. when someone answers a question store that in a table for user_answers: user_id, question_id, answer_id.. then when comparing two users pull all of the answers from both users from user_answers and look at each question they answered, and count how many answers they have in common. This is simply my thinking, on setting up your questions. This makes it easier to add/edit/delete questions as well. For "matching" sites, I would assume there are a lot.
Thanks for walking me through this. In your situation, what would an example entry for "answers" be?
well, lets say I have a question in my question table.. 'question_id'=>1, value=>'Do you like to program?' ... then answers would be 'answer_id'=>1, 'question_id'=>1, value=>'yes' | 'answer_id'=>2, 'question_id'=>1, value=>'no' | 'answer_id'=>3, 'question_id'=>1, value=> 'sometimes' and then for the user_answers table ... 'user_id'=>unique_id, 'question_id'=>1, 'answer_id'=> 3 .. that would signify that I 'sometimes' like to program. You could also have categories for questions.
Ahhh. That makes sense. How about the actual process of choosing who to compare to? I feel like there needs to be preliminary sorting of some sort, and then the actual matching.
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