Re: Algorithm Help

On 1 Oct 2013, at 19:51, Floyd Resler <fresler@adex-intl.com> wrote: > Here's my task: A group of kids is going to be staying with different host families > throughout the next 8 months. The number of kids staying with a host family can range from 2 to 10. > When deciding which kids should stay together at a host family, the idea is for the system to put > together kids who have stayed with each other the least on past weekends. So, if a host family can > keep 5 kids, then the group of 5 kids who have stayed together the least will be chosen. > > I can't think of an easy, quick way to accomplish this. I've tried various > approaches that have resulted in a lot of coding and being very slow. My idea was to give each > group of kids a score and the lowest score is the group that is selected. However, this approach > wound of iterating through several arrays several times which was really slow. Does anyone have any > ideas on this puzzle? Sounds like a job for a directed graph data structure. I wish I had time to knock up a solution but I don't right now. This article should help you get started: http://www.codediesel.com/algorithms/building-a-graph-data-structure-in-php/ -Stuart -- Stuart Dallas 3ft9 Ltd http://3ft9.com/