4 ms·
I wonder if you could augment this further. Assign a scoring system for various conflicts and preferences. Start with the randomly assigned roster and swap rand
by pkaye 8y ago
I wonder if you could augment this further. Assign a scoring system for various conflicts and preferences. Start with the randomly assigned roster and swap random people as long as it improves the overall score.
- dantheman0207 8y agoThis is probably pretty close to how the roster originally came to be, except organically and without any computers.
- snerbles 8y agoThis thought did occur to me, but I didn't have the time to continue iteration past the first revision. Police blotters don't write themselves, as it turns out. If I had to do it today, I'd probably put the list of pair scores on one sheet (e.g. Snuffy/Smith at +5, Smith/Jones at -3) and perform iterative swapping as you suggested.
- ThrustVectoring 8y agoNote that this is the "stable roommates problem" and does not necessarily have an "optimal" solution (where "optimal" means "no unmatched pair of people would've rather been matched together". Eg, if Albert prefers Bob over Charles, Bob prefers Charles over Albert, and Charles prefers Albert over Bob, and all three prefer being matched with the last person over anyone else).
- jpfed 8y agoI did something very similar to this for my wedding seating assignments.
- jschwartzi 8y agoThe problem here is that these conflicts and preferences are constantly shifting. Two people can be good friends one week and decide they hate each others' guts the next week. And then they can go back to being friends again the week after. The Rosternator 3000 can't keep up with this so you're always going to be generating bad schedules for a certain portion of your people. This is one of the reasons good retail managers ignore the advice of their time-keeping systems and give peoples' requests preference. The time-keeping system ignores all of the human aspects of the problem to focus on the least-important aspect of keeping a store running--making sure there are warm bodies in it.
- irrational 8y ago>Two people can be good friends one week and decide they hate each others' guts the next week. And then they can go back to being friends again the week after. So... you're saying soldiers are like girls in high school?
- snerbles 8y agoYes. "I thought this high school bullshit was over!" is one of the most depressingly funny phrases I've ever heard eighteen-year-olds repeatedly utter.
- mrguyorama 8y agoUsually being uttered by the same one's CAUSING said problems
- taneq 8y agoYeah, steer clear of anyone who loudly proclaims they "hate drama". It's like when a two-year-old starts saying they're 'not tired'.
- mcguire 8y agoEver been in a university faculty meeting?
- oh_sigh 8y agoConsidering soldiers are usually only a year or few out of high school, the answer is yes.
- irrational 8y agoI'm just imagining the girls from my high school with weapons. Yikes!
- jschwartzi 8y agoBoys get like this too. It's an affliction of the high-school aged.