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Halo abundance matching (HAM) is a method of comparing observation and theory regarding galaxies and their dark matter halos. Cosmological models models and simulations yield a certain mass distribution of halos and galaxy surveys yield a luminosity distribution of galaxies. The distributions may show a correspondence suggesting a relation between halo mass and its galaxy's luminosity, or alternately, such a correspondence can serve as a plausibility test of some dark matter theory or of some galaxy observations.