Abdul Rahman, Syariza and Bargiela, Andrzej and Burke, Edmund K. and Özcan, Ender and McCollum, Barry and McMullan, Paul (2014) Adaptive linear combination of heuristic orderings in constructing examination timetables. European Journal of Operational Research, 232 (2). pp. 287-297. ISSN 0377-2217

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Abstract

In this paper, we investigate adaptive linear combinations of graph coloring heuristics with a heuristic modifier to address the examination timetabling problem.We invoke a normalisation strategy for each parameter in order to generalise the specific problem data.Two graph coloring heuristics were used in this study (largest degree and saturation degree).A score for the difficulty of assigning each examination was obtained from an adaptive linear combination of these two heuristics and examinations in the list were ordered based on this value.The examinations with the score value representing the higher difficulty were chosen for scheduling based on two strategies.We tested for single and multiple heuristics with and without a heuristic modifier with different combinations of weight values for each parameter on the Toronto and ITC2007 benchmark data sets.We observed that the combination of multiple heuristics with a heuristic modifier offers an effective way to obtain good solution quality.Experimental results demonstrate that our approach delivers promising results. We conclude that this adaptive linear combination of heuristics is a highly effective method and simple to implement.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Examination timetabling Constructive heuristic Linear combinations Graph colouring
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA76 Computer software
Divisions:	School of Quantitative Sciences
Depositing User:	Mrs. Syariza Abdul Rahman
Date Deposited:	12 Nov 2014 07:21
Last Modified:	27 Apr 2016 02:44
URI:	https://repo.uum.edu.my/id/eprint/12649

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