DB or flatfile? I would create a matrix of all kids crossed with every kid. Everytime a kid is put in a home with another kid, ++ that index. When dispatching kids, sort by index ASC. Aziz On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 3:01 PM, John Meyer <johnmeyer@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote: > On 10/1/2013 12:51 PM, Floyd Resler 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? >> >> Thanks! >> Floyd >> >> >> Whatever solution you're going with will probably involve a relational > database of some sort. > > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > >
