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How to Divide Students into Groups: Importance of Diversity and Need for Intelligent Techniques to Further Enhance the Advantage of Groups with Diversity in Problem Solving

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Part of the book series: Studies in Computational Intelligence ((SCI,volume 750))

Abstract

In practice , there are many examples when the diversity in a group enhances the group’s ability to solve problems – and thus, leads to more efficient groups, firms, schools, etc. Several papers, starting with the pioneering research by Scott E. Page from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, provide a theoretical justification for this known empirical phenomenon. However, when the general advise of increasing diversity is transformed into simple-to-follow algorithmic rules (like quotas), the result is not always successful. In this chapter, we prove that the problem of designing the most efficient group is computationally difficult (NP-hard). Thus, in general, it is not possible to come up with simple algorithmic rules for designing such groups: to design optimal groups, we need to combine standard optimization techniques with intelligent techniques that use expert knowledge.

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Correspondence to Olga Kosheleva .

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Kosheleva, O., Villaverde, K. (2018). How to Divide Students into Groups: Importance of Diversity and Need for Intelligent Techniques to Further Enhance the Advantage of Groups with Diversity in Problem Solving. In: How Interval and Fuzzy Techniques Can Improve Teaching. Studies in Computational Intelligence, vol 750. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-55993-2_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-662-55993-2_25

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