What are some known match making algorithms?

Question

That is, given a set of people, each with given features, is there a well known algorithm that is successful at pairing up the most similar people.

Am I over thinking this, or is there some standardized way to go about implementing this?

Answer 1

The most straightforward algorithm would be to take each trait, assign a match value (for boolean traits, 1 or 0), importance weight (possibly a global importance value times a per-user weight based on their own personal assigned importance of the trait), then sum the multiplications of trait value & weights. My guess is that dating sites would use an algorithm like this.