It was former Social Tech students John and Grace Calder who first raised the issue of how best to use the increased pool size.
“You seemed to have already decided how to constrain the solution space”, John told his old teacher, mathematician Sally Aston. “You want to improve compatibility levels.”
“Yes, we anticipate a pool of many million now that international students are encouraged to be candidates by the offer of full scholarships. We could change the compatibility constraint from Level Five right up to Level Seven, best in ten to the seventh.”
“I am not sure that the endless pursuit of ever higher compatibility makes sense. Increasing the pool size gives you more freedom, a bigger space of possible solutions. Insisting on maximum compatibility constrains the space in the way we’re used to, but there could be different constrains instead.”
“Such as?”
“Well, transitivity, for one”, said John, grabbing names out of thin air to illustrate his point. “If Alfred is compatible with Bert and Bert is compatible with Charles, then is Alfred compatible with Charles? Not necessarily. We were taught that the first month in the school. The first week. Transitivity does not hold for human relationships. But you could seek out those for whom it does.”
“OK, so we could use the increased pool size and the greater freedom of choice it gives us to increase the chances of three person, mutually compatible groups forming.”
“I think it would accomplish more than that. A transitive structure is better in many ways, as you know.”
“That’s right. Network flow, and so on. OK, that’s a good idea. Any more?”
“Well, I am not too happy about these chains leading away from the central core”, John continued, reaching around even more wildly for names to use in his example. “It is most obvious with the younger girls. You tend to get a chain like Ann, Bertha, Candy and Danielle beside a chain containing Aida, Barbara, Cindy and Deborah, with no cross-links between the chains. A link between Bertha and Barbara would help.”
“It might be hard to make sure we really had enough links like that, but I get the idea.”
“Well, it’s not the only way to do it. A direct link would be good, but one with an extra person between them would be good too. Link Bertha and Barbara with a mutual friend, Georgina. That kind of link would help improve the structure even if transitivity did not hold. Bertha and Barbara could hate each other on sight, but a mutual friend would establish a good communications channel between them.”
“So we could use of some of our extra flexibility to do more cross-linking. Or in places, do both, add local pockets of transitivity, and cross-link some chains. Whatever works best. Very interesting, John. Is higher compatibility of any value anywhere?”
“Well, Grace and I are not much more than Level Five on the compatibility scale, yet we seem to be the perfect couple. I am not sure there would be much to be gained by seeking Level Seven matches. Is the best in 10 million that much better than the best in 100 thousand? Maybe, but I am not sure it’s worth it.”
“I am sure we have gotten closer, Dr. Aston”, Grace added. “I think that a couple with as much compatibility as we have will usually get closer as they share more and more good experiences. Starting out closer might not help at all.”
“Hmm”. Sally found herself enjoying the prospect of telling Sarah Rivers that she’d got it all wrong.
After talking with John and Grace, Sally went to see her friend and colleague Ann Kelly. “John is right”, Ann said. “Some of the time you will be trying to satisfy the connectivity requirement gaps created by graduations, new students, even our few dropouts. But in general you will have choices, and can constrain the solution space in various quite different ways. I think John’s suggestion about cross-linking is the right one. Transitivity would be nice, though. Neither goal need be all-important. You can pick and choose what is most likely to work. I don’t think we have software to support that, but we could have.”
“Yes. Finding good alternative ways to link people is not in principle much different from matching compatible people, which is what we do all the time. I am not sure how to write the new software, but I am sure we can figure it out. We have a lot of help these days. And then there is Beth Green. I am sure she’d have the right algorithm in seconds, coded up within minutes.”
Convinced, Sally took the new ideas to Sarah Rivers. It was a bit disappointing when Sarah accepted them right away, without even arguing for her earlier position.
“Sure, let’s do it. More cross-linking might just help us overcome the change in the school’s character that will follow from bringing in scholarship students. Previously we have had parents intimately involved. Now we will not, usually.”
“Oh. That’s right.”
“Perhaps you have found the answer before I even asked you the question. Probably more cross-linking would help tie everyone together. There are plenty of other problems to work on, though. We should also consider what to do about room and board, Sally. We have been putting some of the new international students up with the families of local students, but that won’t work for long, as the number of locals becomes less than the number of international students.”
“Well, I have been worried about problems associated with that anyway. Students from nations which have a history of not getting along may cause problems. And the whole community’s support for the school will change as the number of minority students increases.”
“Not too big a problem, Sally. From demographics and statistics, I can say that about one out of three students will come from English-speaking North America – the US and Canada. About one out of every two will not be visible minorities – mostly white, from the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and so on. The rest will be of very diverse racial origins, but there shouldn’t be enough of any one race to associate the school with it. Should be OK.”
“But you are still concerned about the room and board situation.”
“I think we are going to have to build residences. Probably renovated warehouse space, like the school itself. We might be able to staff them mostly with members of the school community itself. Or wire the staff into the community.”
“I like that last idea, Sarah. It would mean that the adults supervising and helping the students would still be members of the community, perhaps even closer ones.”
“I think I know a certain Ken Green or other who might just be willing to finance the creation of residences, if I tell him he is.”
Ken did indeed agree to buy up space that could be converted to school residences. He was also volunteered into paying the conversion costs. Some of the work would be done by students themselves, paid for their services and perhaps also receiving a bit of academic credit for their activities.
Sarah sent members of the school community notices about job opportunities associated with the new residences. If even more staff were needed, she’d add them to the list of people within the community who were being linked up when possible.
After the June graduations and official end of the school year, the summer school had opened again, this time almost overflowing the building as a lot of family members joined the students who came to enjoy the stimulating unstructured educational environment. There was always a bit of recreation as well, plus entertainment, as when students put on impromptu plays or gave musical performances.
Summer was the time when the fall changes were prepared for. When September came, the past year’s senior class would be gone, breaking some links between students in different grades. There would also be a new class of freshmen, many of whom would be international students.
Most of the new scholarship students from other countries would be boarded out with existing students, but it was hoped that sufficient space for the rest would be available in the partially converted residential space.
Beth Green, “nearly sixteen”, would have had her link to the school broken in June by the graduation of the senior class, but was able to spend time in the school and with her long-distance friend Mara during the summer, since like many of the graduating class Mara joined in until Septermber. Looking forward to this, Beth had happily taken the opportunity to come to New York, live with her mother and spend her days at the summer school.
Beth’s inseparable friend and half-sister Esmeralda came with her, also having a long-distance friend to see. The two did art together.
Beth made a few changes to the school’s software, adding capabilities to improve cross-linking and transitivity. Almost as an afterthought she tossed off a bit of code to improve the handling of international students and their residential requirements.
Sally was pleased with Beth’s work, always brilliant and now even better because the girl had gotten adept at using the well-designed, fast and cleanly implemented code libraries provided by Tech Fantasies.
More or less free of her official duties as school principal during the unstructured summer period, Sally did a little software work herself, partially to have a chance to work with the girl. Basing her work on comments by Beth’s mother, Sally tuned up the cross-linking constraint so that it would preferentially select those who would balance the school’s demographics better.
When summer ended, Social Tech high was perhaps 14 percent larger than in June, most of the new students being from other countries. It was almost 90 percent larger than it had been the previous September, with just under a thousand students. Only about 8 percent of the total were international students on full scholarship. The school was still populated mostly by locals with some from elsewhere in the US or Canada. It had a slightly higher percentage of white students than the population as a whole.
This time Beth Green’s long-distance link to the school was a highly compatible international student, Amarita Singh. Amarita was approximately Beth’s own age, which actually was almost 16 by now, just six weeks prior to that key birthday. But whereas Amarita was a junior in highschool, Beth was a sophomore at the University of California. That didn’t seem to matter much. The scholarship student from Northern India was brilliant like Beth herself, and had more education than her nominal level would indicate.
Esmeralda was linked to an even younger student, also a girl from a distant country with a full scholarship. Demina Grecia was only in Grade Nine, a freshman in the school, but she was a talented artist, perhaps as talented as Beth’s half-sister. Fourteen year old Demina was just two years younger than Esmeralda, though the latter was, like Beth, a sophomore at UCB.
Amarita lived in the partially completed school residences, where she was a little uncomfortable, being so close to boys without the formal atmosphere of school to keep them at a distance. As her culture dictated, Amarita was a virgin and had to stay that way until marriage. Her long-distance friend Beth had enjoyed an active sex life for almost a year. Being on their own at UC Berkeley, both Beth and Esmeralda had found plenty of opportunities to make constructive use of Beth’s system.
Fourteen year old Demina boarded with her in-school friend, who belonged to a nice Italian-American family. Both girls dreamed of having a sex life, or of romance with some physical element, but neither was likely to find it for a couple of years. The school would not help young girls in that search.
Beth’s brother Arthur was in the same year as his sister at UC Berkeley, though about a year younger. He was just 15, and normally the software did not support such relationships, but distance was treated as a barrier, so the school had provide a long-distance link to a 16 year old girl, one who was in some of Amarita’s classes.
This girl was a typical white American girl, Tela Jensen, now precisely the median age at which such girls eagerly surrender their virginity. Tela liked Arthur enormously and hoped he would help with this, though he was three thousand miles away.
As it happened, young Arthur Green, business prodigy, was a very rich teenager, entirely through his own efforts. He could afford to fly to New York on weekends and often did. There he met with Tela in person and soon helped her with her little problem. A few expensive dinners and the opportunities afforded by his luxurious hotel room helped, but would not have been necessary.
Though the whole underage sex problem had not been solved and threatened to get worse as the influx of foreign students with different cultural taboos increased, the school was still handling it.
Sally and the other teachers anticipated further problems as the years went by. It would be an increasingly international school, graduating students very tied into local American culture and to American students. Everyone hoped that the government could be persuaded to let them stay, even to bring in their families. The sooner the better, in fact.
If it was up to Sally, she’d bring in the families right away, so they could participate in their child’s education. That had been the old school policy and was still happening, but would be less common in the future, unless immigration problems were solved.
Within four years a lot of what had been done during the school’s two years of operation would have changed. Meanwhile, the class of freshmen from that seemingly distant September were only two years away from graduation. Already they seemed very different than students of the same age in other schools.
Socially confident, comfortable in the school environment, they seemed to have absorbed from their teachers not just a passion for education but considerable wisdom as well. Visiting teachers from other schools were astounded by what was happening in the school. It was creating students as never seen before, anywhere.
Two more years, then a significant number of the seniors leaving the school would have spent all four years of their high school eduction at Social Tech High. Nobody knew what they would be like.