[SciPy-User] Non-science BPP problem

[John Obelenus]

Certainly! Thank you David for showing some interest. This is specifically
for a player ranking/team creation system, but its certainly a BPP, with
some wrinkles.

I have N teams (the bins). And I have M players. Each player has a ranking.
I have both a ranking # (e.g. 1,2,3,...) and a relative ranking (e.g. 35
points = #1 rank, and 29 points = #2 rank, etc). Assigning teams according
to decreasing absolute rank so that teams are even split by absolute
ranking is pretty trivial (and thus "balanced" to an acceptable definition
of "balanced").

What I am trying to solve now is pairing, e.g. players sign up to play with
their friends. So player at Rank A is packed into a group with player Rank
J. And the aggregate ranking of all the teams/groups ought to accommodate
these pairings such that the packages are "balanced" as evenly as they can
be.

So the "Volume" parameter is what I don't know how to specify for the BPP
problem here.

And a further wrinkle is that males and females are assigned to teams
differently (e.g. so each team has an approximately equal# of males and
females), but ranked together (e.g. a female may have a higher rank than a
male, and that matters) and will certainly be paired together to be on the
same team/group. And I am very sure that complicates things :)


On Thu, Feb 6, 2014 at 2:24 PM, David Goldsmith <d.l.goldsmith at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi, John.  Please describe your specific problem in somewhat greater
> detail: "Bin Packing Problem" could mean different things to different
> scientists, depending on their area of expertise.  Thanks!
>
> DG
>
> Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2014 11:57:59 -0500
>
>> From: John Obelenus <jobelenus at gmail.com>
>> Subject: [SciPy-User] Non-science BPP problem
>> To: scipy-user at scipy.org
>> Message-ID:
>>         <CALV8Kbc-WpYX=
>> X-Csv3vdiSvR44dEFN-2KEEOy1Gy9ucfdPAcw at mail.gmail.com>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>>
>> [Noob Trigger Warning]
>>
>> Hey everyone, I'm your standard python programmer that realizes I have a
>> variation of a Bin Packing Problem on my hands. I turn to you for your
>> help
>> in understanding how to use the wonders of your math packages to solve the
>> BPP. I saw that `openopt` has a simple and extended BPP solver, but I am
>> open for whatever python package is going to get the job done.
>>
>> I realize this isn't your standard scipy user mailing, as I'm looking for
>> help just getting started on how to address/specify my problem so that the
>> package can solve it. I took a shot at the archives here but it seems
>> everyone else here is far past my level. If anyone has good introductory
>> resources that can get me from where I am now (understanding that I have a
>> Bin Packing Problem and generally how that works) to solving it
>> (specifically, how to use the packages and implement my data to the solver
>> to get a coherent answer) that would be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Thanks for your time
>> -A Humble Non-Science Programmer
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