The Economics of Multi-sided Market Design and Matching Theory | January 11, 2021

Market Design is the economic study of designing marketplaces to achieve specific desired outcomes using different mechanisms or rules. Auction Theory, Matching Theory, and Game Theory are related areas of study, with Auction Theory focusing on using prices to influence market outcomes, Matching Theory focusing on finding the maximal outcome of pairs of mutually-interested participants in a market, and Game Theory focusing on optimizing decision-making of independent competing actors. Marketplaces are distinct from centralized planning in that the market participants themselves make the decisions as opposed to a centralized planning system making the decisions. Marketplaces can be seen everywhere in our lives from in nature in how animals mate, to the traditional stock exchange clearinghouse where a buyer and seller are matched at an optimal price point, to auctions like that of radio spectrum to telecom providers, to modern online job boards, websites like Ebay, Amazon, Craigslist, and Airbnb, and gig-economy apps likes DoorDash and Uber.

We’ll go over Market Design and Matching Theory, four historic examples, what causes markets to fail, and finally the principles of good Market Design.

Software Architecture - Mapping, Navigation, and ETA System | January 2, 2021

Mapping and navigation functionality is all around us today, from dedicated applications such as Google Maps and Apple Maps to applications with built-in mapping capabilities like Uber, Lyft, Yelp, and DoorDash. These applications provide users the ability to see where they are located, their surroundings, geographical search functionality, and often both the route to a given location and an estimated time of arrival (ETA). The technology to support this geospatial functionality is complex and specialized. Here we will design our very own mapping, navigation, and ETA software solution supporting billions of users and hundreds of millions of points of interest.

Graph Theory and Shortest-Path Routing Algorithms | December 17, 2020

There are multiple classes of geospatial and routing algorithms within Graph Theory, each designed for different use-cases from finding the shortest-path between a single start and end location, to generating permutations of optimal routes covering all nodes in the network, to optimizing graphs through graph transformation, and many more. For example, one of the most famous problems in graph theory is the Four-Color-Problem, determining the possibility of coloring a map with just four colors where no region borders another region with colored the same color. In this article, we will focus on the shortest-path class of algorithms with a single start location as it is fundamental to the mapping navigation and ETA system we will build in a future architecture series article.

Geospatial Indexing | December 2, 2020

Maps are used in software applications all the time - from routing when driving, to ordering takeout, to finding new parks in town. These applications provide users the ability to search for geographic points of interest in a specific geospatial area. To support mapping functionality in a performant manner, understanding approaches to optimally store this geospatial data is critical. In this article we cover seven approaches to storing geospatial data.