OR-Library is a collection of test data sets for a variety of OR problems.
A full list of the test data sets available in OR-Library can be found here.
There are currently 5 data files.
These data files have been contributed by Professor Kate Smith-Miles (kate.smith-miles@monash.edu) who can be contacted for further information about these data sets, and comparative results.
These class-teacher-venue timetabling data sets were originally used by:
D. Abramson and H. Dang, "School timetables: a case study in simulated annealing: sequential and parallel algorithms", LectureNotes in Economics and Mathematics Systems, edited by V. Vidal, Springer-Verlag: Berlin, Chapter 5, pp. 103-124, 1993.
Also used by: M. Randall, D. Abramson and C. Wild, "A general meta-heuristicbased solver for combinatorial optimisation problems", Technical reportTR99-01, School of Information Technology, Bond University, Queensland 4229, Australia.
K. A. Smith, D. Abramson and D. Duke, "Hopfield neural networks
for timetabling:formulations, methods, and comparative results", Computers
and Industrial Engineering, vol. 44, no. 2, pp. 283-305, 2003.
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DESCRIPTION OF DATA FILES:
The data files describe five timetabling problems: hdtt4, hdtt5, hdtt6,
hdtt7, and hdtt8. "hdtt" stands for "hard timetabling",
since these problems
have been designed to be totally constrained. That is, each class, teacher,
and venue is required for each period. The optimal objective function for
each of these problems is zero clashes.
Each problem consists of three text files. For hdtt4 these files are:
hdtt4list (contains the list of requirements expressed as English statements
of the form Class C1 meets teacher T3 in room R4);
hdtt4note (contains the dimensions of the problem, in this case 4 classes,
4 teachers, 4 rooms, 30 periods, and 120 requirements);
hdtt4req (contains a requirements matrix extracted from the list of
requirements).
Researchers wishing to use these data sets need only consider the dimensions
of the problem (given in hdtt4note), and the requirements matrix (given
in hdtt4req), which is read as follows:
Suppose there are C classes, T teachers, V venues, and P periods. Then
the first V rows of matrix indicate the number of times each class-teacher
combination is to meet each other in venue 1 across the P periods. The
next
V rows indicate the number of times each class-teacher combination is to
meet each other in venue 2 across the P periods, etc.
For example, in hdtt4req, the 3rd row contains a "6" in the last
column. This means that class 3 must meet teacher 4 in room 1 six times.
Similarly, row 5 column 2 contains a "5", meaning that class
1 must meet
teacher 2 in room 2 five times. The grouping of rows according to venue
is shown below for hdtt4:
teacher 1 2 3 4
--------------------
class 1 2 2 1 2
2 1 1 1 2
3 1 1 1 6
4 2 2 3 2 venue 1
------------
1 2 5 1 2
2 0 4 3 2
3 1 2 1 0
4 2 2 1 2 venue 2
------------
1 2 1 1 2
2 0 0 5 1
3 2 1 4 1
4 6 1 2 1 venue 3
------------
1 3 1 2 1
2 1 4 1 4
3 3 3 2 1
4 2 0 1 1 venue 4
------------
The entire set of files is of size 50Kb (approximately).
Click here to access these files
OTHER SOURCES Test problems are also available here