A Case Based Heuristic Selection investigation of Hill Climbing, Simulated Annealing and Tabu Search for Exam Timetabling Problems

The examination timetabling problem has been studied in many different forms and using a variety of techniques over the years [1], [3], [4], [6]. In its simplest form, it is required that a set of exams are scheduled into a set of time periods in such a way that no two exams with students in common are scheduled at the same time. In practice there are a wide range of other constraints which must be satisfied or minimized in order to achieve what is thought of as a “good” timetable. These constraints are discussed and analysed in some detail in [2] and [5]. Among the many techniques applied to exam timetabling problems, heuristic methods such as Hill Climbing, Tabu Search and Simulated Annealing are some of the simplest and easiest to implement [4] whilst still providing good results. Many Researchers have developed the simple idea behind these algorithms further to produce more complex and effective algorithms. A number of such Tabu Search techniques are discussed and compared in [6] also with Simulated Annealing and Hill Climbing (i.e. Memetic Algorithms). The aim of this paper will be to develop a Case based reasoning heuristic and meta-heuristic selection system for examination timetabling problems which will include a wide variety of different algorithms. The main motivation for this is the goal of developing exam timetabling systems that are fundamentally more general. We are starting with a very simple set of algorithms and problems which will be progressively built on and modified with the aim of producing a much more complex system capable of providing competitive results when supplied with any exam timetabling problem. The ultimate goal is to develop a system which can obtain results which are at least comparative to the results