The timetabling problem consists in fixing a sequence of meetings between teachers and students in a prefixed period of time (typically a week), satisfying a set of constraints of various types. A large number of variants of the timetabling problem have been proposed in the literature, which differ from each other based on the type of institution involved (university or high school) and the type of constraints. This problem, that has been traditionally considered in the operational research field, has recently been tackled with techniques belonging also to artificial intelligence (e.g. genetic algorithms, tabu search, simulated annealing, and constraint satisfaction). In this paper, we survey the various formulations of the problem, and the techniques and algorithms used for its solution.

A major factor affecting the clarity of graphical displays that include text labels is the degree to which labels obscure display features (including other labels) as a result of spatial overlap. Point-feature label placement (PFLP) is the problem of placing text labels adjacent to point features on a map or diagram so as to maximize legibility. This problem occurs frequently in the production of many types of informational graphics, though it arises most often in automated cartography. In this paper we present a comprehensive treatment of the PFLP problem, viewed as a type of combinatorial optimization problem. Complexity analysis reveals that the basic PFLP problem and most interesting variants of it are NP-hard. These negative results help inform a survey of previously reported algorithms for PFLP; not surprisingly, all such algorithms either have exponential time complexity or are incomplete. To solve the PFLP problem in practice, then, we must rely on good heuristic methods. We pr...

. Finding sets of hard instances of propositional satisfiability is of interest for understanding the complexity of SAT, and for experimentally evaluating SAT algorithms. In discussing this we consider the performance of the most popular SAT algorithms on random problems, the theory of average case complexity, the threshold phenomenon, known lower bounds for certain classes of algorithms, and the problem of generating hard instances with solutions.

New approaches to solving constraint satisfaction problems using iterative improvement techniques have been found to be successful on certain, very large problems such as the million queens. However, on highly constrained problems it is possible for these methods to get caught in local minima. In this paper we present genet, a connectionist architecture for solving binary and general constraint satisfaction problems by iterative improvement. genet incorporates a learning strategy to escape from local minima. Although genet has been designed to be implemented on vlsi hardware, we present empirical evidence to show that even when simulated on a single processor genet can outperform existing iterative improvement techniques on hard instances of certain constraint satisfaction problems.

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We introduce a new class of Markov chain Monte Carlo search procedures, leading to more powerful optimization methods than simulated annealing. The main idea is to embed deterministic local search techniques into stochastic algorithms. The Monte Carlo explores only local optima, and it is able to make large, global changes, even at low temperatures, thus overcoming large barriers in configuration space. We test these procedures in the case of the Traveling Salesman Problem. The embedded local searches we use are 3-opt and Lin-Kernighan. The large change or step consists of a special kind of 4-change followed by local-opt minimization. We test this algorithm on a number of instances. The power of the method is illustrated by solving to optimality some large problems such as the LIN318, the AT&T532, and the RAT783 problems. For even larger instances with randomly distributed cities, the Markov chain procedure improves 3-opt by over 1.6%, and Lin-Kernighan by 1.3%, leading to a new best h...

. Quadratic Assignment Problems model many applications in diverse areas such as operations research, parallel and distributed computing, and combinatorial data analysis. In this paper we survey some of the most important techniques, applications, and methods regarding the quadratic assignment problem. We focus our attention on recent developments. 1. Introduction Given a set N = f1; 2; : : : ; ng and n \Theta n matrices F = (f ij ) and D = (d kl ), the quadratic assignment problem (QAP) can be stated as follows: min p2\Pi N n X i=1 n X j=1 f ij d p(i)p(j) + n X i=1 c ip(i) ; where \Pi N is the set of all permutations of N . One of the major applications of the QAP is in location theory where the matrix F = (f ij ) is the flow matrix, i.e. f ij is the flow of materials from facility i to facility j, and D = (d kl ) is the distance matrix, i.e. d kl represents the distance from location k to location l [62, 67, 137]. The cost of simultaneously assigning facility i to locat...

A recent and very promising approach for combinatorial optimization is to embed local search into the framework of evolutionary algorithms. In this paper, we present such hybrid algorithms for the graph coloring problem. These algorithms combine a new class of highly specialized crossover operators and a well-known tabu search algorithm. Experiments of such a hybrid algorithm are carried out on large DIMACS Challenge benchmark graphs. Results prove very competitive with and even better than those of state-of-the-art algorithms. Analysis of the behavior of the algorithm sheds light on ways to further improvement. Keywords: Graph coloring, solution recombination, tabu search, combinatorial optimization. 1 Introduction A recent and very promising approach for combinatorial optimization is to embed local search into the framework of population based evolutionary algorithms, leading to hybrid evolutionary algorithms (HEA). Such an algorithm is essentially based on two key elements: an eff...

The distribution of hard graph coloring problems as a function of graph connectivity is shown to have two distinct transition behaviors. The first, previously recognized, is a peak in the median search cost near the connectivity at which half the graphs have solutions. This region contains a high proportion of relatively hard problem instances. However, the hardest instances are in fact concentrated at a second, lower, transition point. Near this point, most problems are quite easy, but there are also a few very hard cases. This region of exceptionally hard problems corresponds to the transition between polynomial and exponential scaling of the average search cost, whose location we also estimate theoretically. These behaviors also appear to arise in other constraint problems. This work also shows the limitations of simple measures of the cost distribution, such as mean or median, for identifying outlying cases. 1

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