MCS Thesis

Match-Making in Bartering Scenarios

By: Sbastien Mathieu

Supervisors: Dr. Virendra C. Bhavsar and Dr. Harold Boley

Examining Board: Dr. John DeDourek, Dr. Weichang Du, Dr. Donglei Du December 5th, 2005

Agenda Introduction Background Bartering Trees Tree Approximation Ring Bartering Algorithm

Computational Results
Conclusion

Introduction (1/5)

Internet as a market place Web portals

Simple portals ( www.amazon.com ) Match-making portals ( www.telezoo.com ) Bartering portals ( www.tandcglobal.com ) Advanced portal proposals ( www.teclantic.ca )

Introduction (2/5)

Bartering

The practice of exchanging goods or services without using the medium of money [2]

Introduction (3/5)

Bartering
Agent1
Similarity1

Agent2 Offer2
Aggregate Similarity

Seek1

Offer1

Similarity2

Seek2

Introduction (4/5)
Ring Bartering Agent1 Agent2
Similarity1

Seek1
Offer1

Offer2
Seek2

Agent3
Similarity4 >> Similarity2

Seek3 Offer3
Similarity3 >> Similarity2

Introduction (5/5)
Ring Bartering
O Agent2
s1

s2

O Agent1

sn
O Agentn
sn-1

sk-1

O Agentk
sk

O Agentn-1

sn-2

Background (1/4)

Different match-making techniques

IBM Websphere rules and properties Agent-Mediated eCommerce System with Decision Analysis Features [15] Bhavsar/Boley/Yang Tree similarity algorithm [1,11,12,15,16]

Background (2/4)

Arc labelled weighted trees

Labels on Nodes, fanoutunique labels on Arcs Relative importance on Arcs weights ( wi = 1.0)

Background (3/4)

Similarity Algorithm
Computes the similarity between two arc labeled weighted trees Top-down traversal / Bottom-up computation Can handle trees having different arc labels and structures

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Background (4/4)

Different bartering approaches

The Trade Balance Problem [12] Multi-Agent Learning Improvement [20] Ring Bartering in P2P [3]

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Bartering Trees (1/3)

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Bartering Trees (2/3)

Computing the Aggregate Similarity

Arithmetic mean not judicious

E.g.:

Similarity ( Offer1, Seek2 ) = 1.0 Similarity ( Seek1, Offer2 ) = 0.0 Aggregate similarity = 0.5 ?

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Bartering Trees (2/3)

Computing the Aggregate Similarity

Arithmetic mean not judicious E.g.: Similarity ( Offer1, Seek2 ) = 1.0 Similarity ( Seek1, Offer2 ) = 0.0 Aggregate similarity = 0.5 ? Aggregate similarity ~ 0.3 =
(Aggregate similarity reasonably less than 0.5)

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Bartering Trees (3/3)

The Aggregation Function with a = -1.5

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Tree Approximation (1/3) Motivations

To represent our Trees in a multi-dimensional space and use spatial data-structures To avoid the computation of all similarity values

Concepts
Base: Set of Trees formed by all possible unary trees The maximum depth is the level of the base The lower the level, the greater the approximation Dimension: Number of Trees in the base

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Tree Approximation (1/3)

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Tree Approximation (2/3)

Notion of Distance

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Tree Approximation (3/3)

Behavior of Distance against Similarity

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Notion of Risk The risk takes into account:

The number of participants in the trade The similarities between the corresponding seeks and offers that are involved in the trade

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Ring Bartering Algorithm (1/6)

Our algorithm
Returns the (finite) set of rings starting from a given agent

Divided into three main phases:

Repeated selection of the closest Offers (for a given Seek) first pruning step Closure of the ring Testing of the risk second pruning step

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Ring Bartering Algorithm (2/6)

Overall Algorithm

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Ring Bartering Algorithm (3/6)

Selection of the closest Offers

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Ring Bartering Algorithm (4/6)

Closure of the ring

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Ring Bartering Algorithm (5/6)

Testing of the risk

Ideal Agent = Agent having similarity equal to one with both the previous and the following agent in the ring
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Ring Bartering Algorithm (6/6) Properties of our algorithm

A ring starting from an Agentj of the agent database will be reported by the algorithm, called with Agentj as argument, if and only if it is Dmax/Rmax acceptable Suppose a ring is reported by the algorithm when starting with a given agent. This ring, will be also reported if we start the algorithm with any of the other agents in the ring Dmax = Maximum Distance Rmax = Maximum Risk Dmax/Rmaxacceptable = Risk below Rmax, all Distances below Dmax
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Computational Results (1/4)

Influence of the Distance

Highest Missing Ring = Similarity of the first missing ring when sorted by aggregate similarity
Number of Highest non Missing Rings = Number of Rings before the first missing ring when sorted by aggregate similarity
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Computational Results (2/4) Influence of the Risk

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Computational Results (3/4) Computation Time and Size of the Rings

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Computational Results (4/4) Computation Time without Pruning

(ie Dmax = and Rmax = 1)

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Conclusion (1/2)

We moved from the restrictive buyer/seller scenario to bartering and ring bartering scenarios We developed an efficient algorithm using two pruning techniques based on the notions of Distance and Risk

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Conclusion (2/2) Future Work

Pairing: to create the best combination of rings involving every agent in the virtual market place exactly once Local Similarity: can improve our tree approximation by adding information without increasing the number of dimensions Transfer tree approximation technique back to indexing in non-bartering scenario

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Questions ?

Thanks !

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 A zero Distance example with a low similarity for a level 1 base

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 Seller weights: an example

Seller1 emphasizes his/her pool easier negotiation phase

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 An example of Base

Bases of dimension 5 and 2

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