| | | |

EFFICIENT COURSE AND EXAM SCHEDULING USING GRAPH COLORING

Evi Papaioannou [1] , Stavros Athanassopoulos [2] , Christos Kaklamanis [3]

126 286

Graphs are discrete structures composed of vertices and edges connecting these vertices. Graphs are used in almost all disciplines as abstract models for the representation and study of a wide range of relations and processes in physical, biological, social and information systems. Many practical problems in a variety of areas like computer and communication networks, social networks, transportation networks, cellular networks, linguistics, chemistry, physics, biology can be represented and studied by graphs.

Real-world entities - like molecules, persons, groups, roles, species, computing and communication devices, terms - correspond to vertices. Relations among such entities - like preference, domination, independence, interference, proximity, constraints - imply the existence of edges between corresponding vertices. Thus, focusing on the abstract graph model instead of studying each particular instance as a different real-world problem reveals common underlying properties, deficiencies and principles. In this way, efficient approaches to real-world problems emerge from the theoretical study of their abstractions.

In this work, we use graph coloring to propose efficient solutions to scheduling problems arising in higher education. The objective of the graph coloring problem is to assign colors to graph vertices so that adjacent vertices, i.e., vertices connected by an edge, receive different colors. We consider as the objective of scheduling problems in higher education, like lecture and exam scheduling, to assign time/day slots to teaching or examination activities so that the maximum number of students can attend them with the fewest possible conflicts.

Our main motivation has been the crucial issue of efficient course and exam schedules often arising in departments of the University of Patras, Greece. Students usually have to attend lectures or exams scheduled in overlapping or simultaneous time slots. However, course and exam schedules are created based on heuristic approaches which may work well on average but certainly leave several room for improvement.

What if a graph-theoretic approach were used? Courses correspond to vertices of a graph and there is an edge between two vertices if and only if an appropriately selected minimum population of students attends corresponding courses (lectures/exams). Then, a coloring of such an underlying graph suggests an appropriate schedule for teaching/examination activities.

Using a simple coloring algorithm and the MATLAB programming environment, we have designed and developed a scheduling application which receives as input courses and constraints and outputs an efficient lecture/examination schedule. Experimental evaluation suggests that our application works well in practice. Ongoing work focuses on the use of a more involved coloring algorithm for addressing more complex course scheduling instances while minimizing required time resources.

graph coloring, scheduling, higher education
• Appel, K. and Haken, W. (1977). The Solution of the Four-Color Map Problem. Scientific American, vol. 237, no. 4, pp. 108-121. Appel, K. and Haken, W. (1989). Every Planar Map is Four-Colorable. American Mathematical Society, vol. 98. Bondy J. A. and Murty U. S. R (1982). Graph theory with applications. Elsevier Science Publishing Co., Inc. ISBN: 0-444-19451-7 Brooks, R. L. (1941). On Coloring the Nodes of a Network. Mathematical Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Vol. 37, Issue 2, pp. 194-197. Chaitin, G. J. (1982). Register allocation & spilling via graph colouring. In Proceedings of the 1982 SIGPLAN Symposium on Compiler Construction, pp. 98–105. Cormen, T. H., Leiserson, C. E., Rivest, R. L., Stein, C. (2001). Introduction to Algorithms (2nd ed.), MIT Press and McGraw-Hill, ISBN 0-262-03293-7. Feige U., Kilian J. (1998). Zero knowledge and the chromatic number. Journal of Computer and System Sciences, vol. 57, pp. 187–199. Garey, M. R., Johnson, D. S. (1979). Computers and Intractability: A Guide to the Theory of NP-Completeness. Freeman, New York, 1979. Håstad J. (1999). Clique is hard to approximate within n1−e . Acta Mathematica, vol. 182, pp. 105–142. Karp R. M. (1972). Reducibility Among Combinatorial Problems. Complexity of Computer Computations, pp. 85–103. Kempe, A. B. (1879). On the Geographical Problem of Four Colors. American Journal of Mathematics, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 193-200. Khanna S. and Kumaran K. (1998). On Wireless Spectrum Estimation and Generalized Graph Coloring. In Proceedings of the 17th Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (INFOCOM 1998), IEEE, pp. 1449 - 1461. Khot S. (2001). Improved inapproximability results for MaxClique, Chromatic Number and Approximate Graph Coloring. In Proceedings of the 42nd Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS 2001), IEEE, pp. 600–609. Lewis, R. (2015). A Guide to Graph Colouring: Algorithms and Applications. Springer International Publishers. Lovász, L. (1975). Three Short Proofs in Graph Theory. Journal of Combinatorial Theory, Series B, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 111-113. Marx, D. (2004). Graph colouring problems and their applications in scheduling. Periodica Polytechnica, Electrical Engineering, 48 (1–2), pp. 11-16. Moler, C. (2004). The Origins of MATLAB. Mathworks. Narayanan L. and Shende S. (2001). Static Frequency Assignment in Cellular Networks. Algorithmica, vol. 29, issue 3, pp 396–409. Pardalos P. M., Mavridou T., Xue J. (1998). The Graph Coloring Problem: A Bibliographic Survey. Handbook of Combinatorial Optimization, Kluwer Academic Publishers, vol. 2, pp. 331-395. Roberts, F. S. (1978). Graph theory and its applications to the problems of society, CBMS-NSF Monograph 29, SIAM Publications. Xu J. (2003). Theory and application of graphs. Springer Science and Business Media, LLC. ISBN 9778-1-4613-4670-8 Zuckerman, D. (2007). Linear degree extractors and the inapproximability of max clique and chromatic number. Theory of Computing, vol. 3, pp. 103–128.
Konular Sosyal Makaleler Yazar: Evi PapaioannouÜlke: Greece Yazar: Stavros AthanassopoulosÜlke: Greece Yazar: Christos KaklamanisÜlke: Greece
 Bibtex @araştırma makalesi { ijaedu309802, journal = {International E-Journal of Advances in Education}, issn = {}, eissn = {2411-1821}, address = {OCERINT International Organization Center of Academic Research}, year = {2017}, volume = {3}, pages = {51 - 59}, doi = {10.18768/ijaedu.309802}, title = {EFFICIENT COURSE AND EXAM SCHEDULING USING GRAPH COLORING}, key = {cite}, author = {Athanassopoulos, Stavros and Papaioannou, Evi and Kaklamanis, Christos} } APA Papaioannou, E , Athanassopoulos, S , Kaklamanis, C . (2017). EFFICIENT COURSE AND EXAM SCHEDULING USING GRAPH COLORING. International E-Journal of Advances in Education, 3 (7), 51-59. DOI: 10.18768/ijaedu.309802 MLA Papaioannou, E , Athanassopoulos, S , Kaklamanis, C . "EFFICIENT COURSE AND EXAM SCHEDULING USING GRAPH COLORING". International E-Journal of Advances in Education 3 (2017): 51-59 Chicago Papaioannou, E , Athanassopoulos, S , Kaklamanis, C . "EFFICIENT COURSE AND EXAM SCHEDULING USING GRAPH COLORING". International E-Journal of Advances in Education 3 (2017): 51-59 RIS TY - JOUR T1 - EFFICIENT COURSE AND EXAM SCHEDULING USING GRAPH COLORING AU - Evi Papaioannou , Stavros Athanassopoulos , Christos Kaklamanis Y1 - 2017 PY - 2017 N1 - doi: 10.18768/ijaedu.309802 DO - 10.18768/ijaedu.309802 T2 - International E-Journal of Advances in Education JF - Journal JO - JOR SP - 51 EP - 59 VL - 3 IS - 7 SN - -2411-1821 M3 - doi: 10.18768/ijaedu.309802 UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.18768/ijaedu.309802 Y2 - 2017 ER - EndNote %0 International E-Journal of Advances in Education EFFICIENT COURSE AND EXAM SCHEDULING USING GRAPH COLORING %A Evi Papaioannou , Stavros Athanassopoulos , Christos Kaklamanis %T EFFICIENT COURSE AND EXAM SCHEDULING USING GRAPH COLORING %D 2017 %J International E-Journal of Advances in Education %P -2411-1821 %V 3 %N 7 %R doi: 10.18768/ijaedu.309802 %U 10.18768/ijaedu.309802 ISNAD Papaioannou, Evi , Athanassopoulos, Stavros , Kaklamanis, Christos . "EFFICIENT COURSE AND EXAM SCHEDULING USING GRAPH COLORING". International E-Journal of Advances in Education 3 / 7 (Nisan 2017): 51-59. http://dx.doi.org/10.18768/ijaedu.309802