Abstract
Creating timetables is a complex and recurring task at any university. Basically, the goal is to create a weekly schedule of the teaching activities by assigning lectures to rooms and time periods (timeslots). From the perspective of a computer scientist, it seems natural to formalize the task in terms of a computational problem so that timetables can be created in an automated fashion. In this work we will deal with formal computational problems related to course timetabling as well as the problem of formalizing the course timetabling task. One of our main topics occurring throughout this work will be the formalization of the quality of a timetable and how to measure it.
In regard to hedonism and utilitarianism, I believe that it is indeed necessary to replace their principle: maximize pleasure! by one which is probably more in keeping with the original views of Democritus and Epicurus, more modest, and much more urgent. I mean the rule: minimize pain!
Karl R. Popper
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Notes
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We invite the adventurous reader to have a peek at p. 123 for the visualization of a small part of the problem instance solved for the 2013 winter term.
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Mühlenthaler, M. (2015). Introduction. In: Fairness in Academic Course Timetabling. Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, vol 678. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12799-6_1
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