Matching with Roles

Random matching when the roles are constant

In the Practice: Trust Game and the Roles sections, we defined the roles based on the player attribute id_in_group. This is the easiest and the most convenient way most of the time. As we seen previously this can work out of the box.

../_images/mtc_same_group_same_role.png

Fig. 19 Default matching when we have the roles defined on id_in_group. 1 for red player , 2 for green player.

However recall that, in the random matching example in the previous page, Player 1 and all the other players can be either in the first or the second position in their group list. Their position in their group coincides with their id_in_group.

In some cases we would like to keep the id_in_group constant for each player. Luckily, group_randomly() have a feature to shuffle the groups while keeping the id_in_group constant.

../_images/mtc_random_matching_id.png

Fig. 20 The method with the argument, group_randomly(fixed_id_in_group=True) shuffles players in a way that each player is in the same id as before.

We can obtain this behavior by adding fixed_id_in_group=True argument in group_randomly:

class Subsession(BaseSubsession):
    def creating_session(self):
        self.group_randomly(fixed_id_in_group=True)

We can also confirm with our output of get_group_matrix():

== Round  1  == 
  Matching:  [[<Player  3>, <Player  2>], [<Player  1>, <Player  4>], [<Player  5>, <Player  6>]]
== Round  2  == 
  Matching:  [[<Player  1>, <Player  4>], [<Player  3>, <Player  6>], [<Player  5>, <Player  2>]]
== Round  3  == 
  Matching:  [[<Player  1>, <Player  2>], [<Player  3>, <Player  6>], [<Player  5>, <Player  4>]]

So our matching looks something like this:

../_images/mtc_random_group_same_role.png

Fig. 21 The method with the argument, group_randomly(fixed_id_in_group=True) shuffles players in a way that each player is in the same id as before.

Putting it all together: Defining roles

  • Let’s say we would like to have two roles: red and green

  • We would like to shufle groups in the first round keep constant for the rest.

Our models.py would look like this:

class Subsession(BaseSubsession):
    def creating_session(self):
        if self.round_number == 1:
            self.group_randomly(fixed_id_in_group=True)
        else:
            self.group_like_round(1)
        
        print("== Round " , self.round_number, " == ")
        print("  Matching: ", self.get_group_matrix())

        if self.round_number == Constants.num_rounds:
            print("\n\n")

class Group(BaseGroup):

    pass


class Player(BasePlayer):
    def role(self):
        if self.id_in_group == 1:
            return 'red'
        if self.id_in_group == 2:
            return 'green'

== Round  1  == 
  Matching:  [[<Player  1>, <Player  4>], [<Player  3>, <Player  6>], [<Player  5>, <Player  2>]]
== Round  2  == 
  Matching:  [[<Player  1>, <Player  4>], [<Player  3>, <Player  6>], [<Player  5>, <Player  2>]]
== Round  3  == 
  Matching:  [[<Player  1>, <Player  4>], [<Player  3>, <Player  6>], [<Player  5>, <Player  2>]]

Using set_group_matrix()

* We can give a specific matching structure by using `set_group_matrix()` method in `Subsession` class. As `get_group_matrix()` gives us a nested list of groups of player objects, we should constract the same structure.

* To do that, first we need to get player objects (`self.get_players()` or the original matrix (`self.get_group_matrix()`)

* We can also do that by providing a nested list of integers instead of player objects. Each integer represents player's `id_in_subsession`. For instance:
class Subsession(BaseSubsession):
    def creating_session(self):
        grouping = [[1,2],[4,3],[5,6]]
        self.set_group_matrix(grouping)

This gives us the output:

== Round  1  == 
  Matching:  [[<Player  1>, <Player  2>], [<Player  4>, <Player  3>], [<Player  5>, <Player  6>]]
== Round  2  == 
  Matching:  [[<Player  1>, <Player  2>], [<Player  4>, <Player  3>], [<Player  5>, <Player  6>]]
== Round  3  == 
  Matching:  [[<Player  1>, <Player  2>], [<Player  4>, <Player  3>], [<Player  5>, <Player  6>]]
== Round  4  == 
  Matching:  [[<Player  1>, <Player  2>], [<Player  4>, <Player  3>], [<Player  5>, <Player  6>]]