Topics

I want to divide a data set into four groups such that the sum of elements of each group is approximately same.
for eg: [10, 5, 1, 20, 5, 22, 4, 15]
For the above data set: sum of all the elements = 82
So, I want this data set to be divided into 4 groups such that, the sum of elements of each group is almost same.
One such possibility is
Set 1: 10, 5, 4,1
Set 2: 20
Set 3: 22
Set 4: 15,5
How do I set up this?

An algorithm, C or MATLAB program is highly appreciated

I came across a peculiar case.

No of FET Days: 10
No of Fet hours per day: 2
No of rooms: 8 (out of 8, I marked 3 rooms unavailable all times). i.e only 5 are available all times

So, the timetable is possible only for 100 activities (10*2*5)

Just to check, I added 105 activities. Surprisingly FET is not saying "not enough room" and it is trying to find a timetable...

An example is attached. At the start of timetable generation itself, it should point out that there is not enough room for 5 (105-10*2*5) activities. The highest timetable contains 100 activities, at least then FET should pop-up an error saying no room for remaining 5 activities.

In the attached sample exam timetable, more events are scheduled in Day-1 as compared to that of Day-2.

1) How do I constrain the activities to be distributed evenly (with some weight) among all the FET days
2) Similarly, how do I constrain the activities to be distributed evenly (with some weight) among all FET hours of any FET day?


even if the above two are not possible, its OK. But the below one is much needed.

3) How do I constrain the number of activities of all FET hours of all days in such a way that the total number of students (unique subgroups) will be equal (with some weight)?
i.e: for example, the number of students giving exam on Day-1 in Slot-1 should be approximately equal to the number of students giving exam on Day-5 in Slot-2.....

PS: Currently I don't have any rooms assigned, I prefer not to assign rooms because four different student groups will be sitting in every room while giving exams.

In my timetable individual roll numbers are subgroups. I added activities to FET student groups. I want to use activities->min days between set of activities. I want to implement this constraint for every student. But, as the subgroups are individual roll numbers, when I select the subgroup from filter, no activities are shown. How do I constrain, if no activities are listed?

I am thinking of preparing an exam schedule using FET

Data------
1) 12 days per week and 2 FET hours per day
2) FET Group Names are real-life subject names
3) FET Subgroups are real-life individual student roll numbers
4) FET subjects are real-life subject names
5) Created activities by selecting a FET group and FET subject (In fact names of both FET group and FET subject are same )

Constraint added-----
1) Students maximum hours daily one {this is just temporary and I need to remove this constraint and replace it with a better one as expressed in point 2 below}

Now coming to my doubts/questions
1) How do I disable printing (html) empty days in student timetables? i.e. in the attached example, I don't want to see Day 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11 & 12 for that particular student. This is to make timetable look decent.

2) Some times it is not possible to use the 'maximum hours daily -1' constraint. So, How do I ensure that the timetabler tries to place 'maximum one-hour in a day for all possible cases and 2 hours for impossible ones?....I think by changing the weight, this should be taken care of

3) As the Subject names and FET Group Names are same, it is not looking good to see the same name repeating in every box. How do I restrict Subject names from printing?....I think one option is by changing the css.

4) How do I ensure that there will be maximum possible gap (for preparation/revision) between two exams (activities) for a student?. What constraint I should use. I prefer alternate day exams for any student (to the extent possible)

My time table becomes impossible when I make max gaps as "zero or one" per week. So, I decided to to go with max 2 gaps per week for all student sets. I have generated the timetable which looks like the attached.

I have a lunch break activity which is preferred to be placed in 6th or 7th periods. Now, what constraints I should use so that these gaps, if any, are always adjacent to a lunch break (or) it is in the 1st or last period of any day?

I don't think I can add a dummy activity (just like lunch) because, I don't know the number of gaps for any particular group (it can be 'zero', 'one', or 'two')....With this, my timetable will become perfect. 

Here, Lunch break is created by the combination of Subject: Lunch and activity Tag: Break.

How do I constrain teacher(s) to have minimum one activity in the first period in a week (it can be on the first period of any day: but at least once in a week)?. i.e. All the teachers must teach in 1st-period at-least once in a week.

Also, How do I constrain teacher(s) to have maximum two activities in the first period in a week.

edit: I am not sure if constraining the split activities (as per the split activity id) to have preferred starting times would work or not

I want to know the best open source school/college information management software. I have seen the links given on Liviu's webpage. However, want to know which one is most user-friendly and provide maximum functionalities. Which one would you prefer/refer most?

I am asking only for information purpose. I am not a potential customer for any sale 

I simply want to know the 'FET' of college information management domain.

Suppose, if I have an activity (duration 3 periods) which is split into 3 split activities. At a later stage, if I want to split into 2 activities (2+1), is there any way to do it other than deleting the activity and creating again? Just wanted to know

I have some students sets (around 30 groups) having some activities with activity tags (L), (T), (Lab). For these groups, I want all activities with tags (L) to be scheduled in rooms LHC-101, LHC-102.....LHC-109.

I have a student set 1MD having some activities with activity tags (L), (T), (Lab). I want all the (L) and (T) of this group to be scheduled in room no AB-101 only.

What constraint Should I use for the student set 1MD so that it won't conflict the constraint "All the activities with activity tags (L)have preferred rooms LHC-101, LHC-102.....LHC-109"?

While importing some activities (around 200) of students of a year (1st Year) from .csv (which was created using MATLAB), I made some mistake.
So, I created the .csv file again and wanted to import the activities again. I tried to delete all the activities for the 1st year. But, I couldn't find an option "delete activities for this year".

I had left with two options
1) Deactivating all the activities for 1st year
2) Deleting all activities for all years and then importing again for all years (but this way I lost all the time and space constraints I imposed on years other than 1st year also): So, this is definately not a recommended idea.

I was wondering if there is an option to delete all the activities for 1st year. If not, is it possible provide a button in the student section for "delete activities for this year, delete activities for this group, delete activities for this sub-group" like it is currently for deactivating & activating the activities?

Let us say a time table is generated with some constraints and locked. Now, If a faculty wants to re-schedule an activity, then if an interface as explained below will be much more appealing.

Stage-1
Say, Teacher-1 wants his lecture scheduled on Monday Morning 8:30 to be shifted to any other possible day&timing of his own timetable. So, we go to the particular teacher's timetable and click on the box. If by some means, all the possible positions (satisfying all the constraints) where this lecture could be relocated gets highlighted, then it would be great. Just like we play chess on a computer, and all possible moves of a chesspiece gets highlighted upon selection. Then a simple drag and drop kind of thing.

Stage-2
Teacher-1 wants his lecture scheduled on Monday Morning 8:30 (say Group A) to be swapped with some teacher-2 who is teaching the same student group (A), but different subject. By showing both teachers timetable side-by-side and highlighting the boxes of teacher-2 upon clicking the lecture of Teacher-1.

This is just a suggestion, definitely not very important. But, it will be very easy this way to modify timetable without breaking constraints, if we get some swap requests

How can I impose a constraint to schedule a set of activities to be consecutive as well as in the same room, if they are falling on the same day?
The requirement is this:
In our institute, we have 4 periods before lunch and 3 periods after lunch. We have Lectures (compulsory), Practicals and tutorials and some times elective lectures too. Suppose for a batch, on a given day, 3 Lectures (compulsory){Subject-1, Subject-2, Subject-3}, 1 elective lecture {Subject-4}, a lab with 2 periods and 1 tutorial need to be scheduled. I prefer all the compulsory lectures to be scheduled consecutively so that students don't need to change rooms for the compulsory lectures.

When I impose a constraint "a set of activities are in the same room if consecutive", then the algorithm places the tutorial/lab/elective lecture between two compulsory lectures. With this, students need to switch rooms very frequently. So, I want to impose a constraint "a set of activities to be consecutive if they are falling on sameday".

I can't use the constraint "three activities are grouped". I have to maintain a minimum 1-day gap between split activities with 100% weightage.

I am trying to generate an exam timetable. The exams are spanned over 15 days and 3 slots in each day. I just want to know if there is any way to assign teachers (invigilators: 2 in Nos to each room) automatically?

1) All the students of a department are divided into 2 groups (like ME 1-4, ME 1-8) for lectures and each group is divided into 4 subgroups (ME 1, ME 2, ME 3, ME 4, ME 5, ME 6, ME 7 and ME-8) for practicals. Our students have to study 6 courses out of which 4 are compulsory and 2 are ELective subjects. Every student has to choose any two subjects out of four Elective subjects (say E1, E2, E3, E4). That means E1 may have students from all the eight subgroups. Similarly, all other Elective subjects (E2, E3, and E4) may also have students from all subgroups.

What is the best way to split the department (into categories) so that we can include this?

1) is it possible to hide teachers' names in students' html timetables?
2) I don't want to show teachers' names for only 1 or 2 activities while printing the student timetables. This is because we have a project activity where all the teachers will be engaged.

Hi, I wrote a MATLAB program to generate the .csv file of all activities as per our course scheme, which can be imported to FET. Is there any way I can import constraints from any file format, so that I don't need to add constraints manually (just to reduce some repeated task)

I started preparing a time table. However, I end up having only labs on Wednesday. How do I set minimum hours per day for an activity tag?. Like minimum 2 Lectures (Tag:L) a day, so that the lectures are distributed evenly (3-5 lectures a day)on all days.

We have Teaching assistants who are none other than Masters students, who will assist the Professors during a lab/tutorial activity. For them the maximum load per week is 8hrs.
Is there any way to attach teaching assistants to lab/tutorials automatically?

Is there any time constraint that can be applied to all student sets so that we can start late on Monday and finish early on Friday.