The Solution of Real Instances of the Timetabling Problem

This paper describes a computer program for high school timetabling which has completely solved an instance taken without simplification from a large and tightly constrained high school. A timetable specification language allows the program to handle the many idiosyncratic constraints of such instances in a uniform way. New algorithms are introduced which attack the problem more intelligently than traditional search methods. 10 August, The Solution of Real Instances of the Timetabling Problem Tim B. Cooper and Jeffrey H. Kingston Basser Department of Computer Science The University of Sydney 2006 Australia 1. Introduction The basic timetabling problem is to assign times, teachers, students, and rooms to a collection of classes and other meetings in such a way that none of the participants is required to attend two meetings simultaneously. Real instances can be very large, with hundreds of participants and hundreds of meetings squeezed into a week of about forty meeting times; and ..