| As the subtitle says, this is a "Contemporary YA Romance About Grief, College, and Attraction Beyond Algorithms".
The protagonist, Grace Tang, is a college freshman who creates a mathematical model to match romantic partners as a project for an upperlevel math course she is taking. Though the algorithm has matched her with a guy named Jamie, that relationship doesn't seem to have as many "sparks" as the one with her coworker, Gracie.
As should be clear by now, this is one of those works of mathematical fiction whose about the limitations of math when it comes to love. Such stories are not generally my favorites. That's not because I disagree with the "moral". As much as I both adore and respect mathematics, I must admit that it only has limited applicability to daily "real life" questions. What I often dislike about works of mathematical fiction that emphasize this is that they feature unrealistically nerdy characters who genuinely try to use lame "equations" to guide every aspect of their lives.
So, I'm happy to say that this particular novel does a relatively nice job of describing the math side of things. The setup seems believable and not just a "strawman" designed to be knocked down. For instance, here is its description of the class from which Grace receives the fateful assignment:
| (quoted from True Love and Other Impossible Odds)
Game Theory and Market Design is an upper-level mathematics elective class with intro-class prerequisites. Freshmen like me aren't supposed to take it, but I'd wanted to graduate in three years and, through an appeal and the careful coaxing of the registrar's office, I'd gotten in. I'd heard good things about the professor, too. Professor Rand is the mathematics department head, and he's been teaching at Leighton for the past twenty-one years. Word is that a recommendation from him could all but guarantee a coveted summer math research position with a professor in the department. Which is what I want.
It's interesting. We've talked about all sorts of strategy games: about zero-sum games that give one person what they want at the expense of the other person's total loss, or about probability and payout. We talk about psychology and political negotiations. The professor's animated and gestures wildly with his hands.
He teaches old-school, too, which means he covers the blackboard with nearly unreadable chalky text and half the work is to decipher it for our notes. On the board today is scrawled Market Design and Matching Algorithms.
"We have cooperative and noncooperative games."
Professor Rand runs his fingers through his wispy blond hair and crosses his arms. The shoulder pads of his suit jacket peak up. "Games that can be achieved by forming coalitions, and games that can be achieved by simple strategy alone. Like we'd mentioned last time, mathematicians and economists always thought that those two things were separate. But as it turns out, they came together to form the basis of market design." He pauses.
"And markets form the basis of a lot of the matching systems out there."
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I am really not part of the target audience for this young adult novel. If there is someone reading this who is, I would be very grateful if you could share your opinions about it. Please write to let me whether you enjoyed it as a work of fiction and what you thought of its portrayal of mathematics.
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