Triadic Closures in Roommate Finding
Article: https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0378873311000530?token=15A6517C78B4E3801A729BD8E596897BDC01CB482A2820D39C4486C8EA222A8A605FB1A59A483E6F7147392CC8434365&originRegion=us-east-1&originCreation=20210930174935
There are several articles on how colleges use matching markets in order to pair students together as random roommates. How about if students do not go random? How do they often find their roommate? Sometimes their roommate may be someone they already know and they end up hating each other by the end of the year. Other times they may not have even known the other person existed and end up best friends.
I remember being stressed in finding a roommate. I committed to Cornell Early Decision, so I knew I had plenty of time. However, I instantly joined Facebook groups and started connecting with anyone I noticed going to Cornell. I was someone who found my roommate in using this method, an increasingly popular way. We have stayed close friends throughout the past three years. I joined a Cornell Class of 2023 Facebook group and used it to find people that would potentially seem like a good fit. On this facebook group, you can post paragraph descriptions about yourself, or you can see who you have mutual friends with. I chose to go the mutual friends path.
The mutual friends roommate finding path is an example of how the triadic closure property plays in real life. Two people who are friends with the same person, often become friends with each other themselves. They are more likely to meet due to having this mutual friend. I only discovered my roommate because we had this mutual friend and facebook helped me see it. I spoke to our mutual friend, and determined we would be a good match. I reached out to her and then we were roommates. This mutual friend made it where she was able to get added to my friendship network, creating a triangle between the three of us, and fulfilling the triadic closure property.
This article I attached speaks more about triadic closures and when they occur. This article states: “However, transitivity is predominantly studied for directed relationship where a triad is called transitive if, in case there is a tie from person A to person B and from person B to person C, there is also a tiefrom person A to person C. Because we do not distinguish between reciprocated and unreciprocated relationships, we use the term triadic closure throughout this study”. My roommate finding method used this transitivity property eventually helping form the triadic closure.