On 1 Oct 2013, at 19:51, Floyd Resler <fres...@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?
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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/ -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php
