How can items be allocated among participants so that no one feels short-changed? Alexander Karpov, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, and his Singaporean colleague, Prof. Warut Suksompong, set out to find a mathematical answer to this question. In this interview, they discuss how a model of rational preferences is constructed, why one cannot rely on a simple sum of values, and where an algorithm that asks a minimal number of questions can be useful.