Partitioning a list
Steven D'Aprano
steve+comp.lang.python at pearwood.info
Tue Aug 21 20:22:22 EDT 2018
On Tue, 21 Aug 2018 14:36:30 -0700, Poul Riis wrote:
> I would like to list all possible ways to put N students in groups of k
> students (suppose that k divides N) with the restriction that no two
> students should ever meet each other in more than one group. I think
> this is a classical problem
If its a classical problem, there should be many solutions written for
other languages. Take one of them and port it to Python. (We can help
with the Python part if needed.)
I've never come across it before. I think the restriction makes it a HARD
problem to solve efficiently, but I've spent literally less than two
minutes thinking about it so I could be wrong.
With no additional restriction it sounds like a classical permutations or
combinations problem. Check out the combinatoric iterators functions in
the itertools module:
https://docs.python.org/3/library/itertools.html
--
Steven D'Aprano
"Ever since I learned about confirmation bias, I've been seeing
it everywhere." -- Jon Ronson
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