Round Robin algorithm should solve this and is a fairly quick alogrithm ... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-robin An example can be found http://forrst.com/posts/PHP_Round_Robin_Algorithm-2zm On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 2:51 PM, Floyd Resler <fresler@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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 > > > -- > PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) > To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php > > -- Nickolas Whiting Freelance Consultant
