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A Step Counting Hill Climbing Algorithm applied to University Examination Timetabling

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  • Yuri Bykov

    (Nottingham University Business School)

  • Sanja Petrovic

    (Nottingham University Business School)

Abstract

This paper presents a new single-parameter local search heuristic named step counting hill climbing algorithm (SCHC). It is a very simple method in which the current cost serves as an acceptance bound for a number of consecutive steps. This is the only parameter in the method that should be set up by the user. Furthermore, the counting of steps can be organised in different ways; therefore, the proposed method can generate a large number of variants and also extensions. In this paper, we investigate the behaviour of the three basic variants of SCHC on the university exam timetabling problem. Our experiments demonstrate that the proposed method shares the main properties with the late acceptance hill climbing method, namely its convergence time is proportional to the value of its parameter and a non-linear rescaling of a problem does not affect its search performance. However, our new method has two additional advantages: a more flexible acceptance condition and better overall performance. In this study, we compare the new method with late acceptance hill climbing, simulated annealing and great deluge algorithm. The SCHC has shown the strongest performance on the most of our benchmark problems used.

Suggested Citation

  • Yuri Bykov & Sanja Petrovic, 2016. "A Step Counting Hill Climbing Algorithm applied to University Examination Timetabling," Journal of Scheduling, Springer, vol. 19(4), pages 479-492, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:jsched:v:19:y:2016:i:4:d:10.1007_s10951-016-0469-x
    DOI: 10.1007/s10951-016-0469-x
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. David S. Johnson & Cecilia R. Aragon & Lyle A. McGeoch & Catherine Schevon, 1991. "Optimization by Simulated Annealing: An Experimental Evaluation; Part II, Graph Coloring and Number Partitioning," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 39(3), pages 378-406, June.
    2. Burke, Edmund Kieran & Petrovic, Sanja, 2002. "Recent research directions in automated timetabling," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 140(2), pages 266-280, July.
    3. David S. Johnson & Cecilia R. Aragon & Lyle A. McGeoch & Catherine Schevon, 1989. "Optimization by Simulated Annealing: An Experimental Evaluation; Part I, Graph Partitioning," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 37(6), pages 865-892, December.
    4. Barry McCollum & Andrea Schaerf & Ben Paechter & Paul McMullan & Rhyd Lewis & Andrew J. Parkes & Luca Di Gaspero & Rong Qu & Edmund K. Burke, 2010. "Setting the Research Agenda in Automated Timetabling: The Second International Timetabling Competition," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 22(1), pages 120-130, February.
    5. Burke, Edmund K. & McCollum, Barry & Meisels, Amnon & Petrovic, Sanja & Qu, Rong, 2007. "A graph-based hyper-heuristic for educational timetabling problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 176(1), pages 177-192, January.
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    Cited by:

    1. Ceschia, Sara & Di Gaspero, Luca & Schaerf, Andrea, 2023. "Educational timetabling: Problems, benchmarks, and state-of-the-art results," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 308(1), pages 1-18.
    2. Burke, Edmund K. & Bykov, Yuri, 2017. "The late acceptance Hill-Climbing heuristic," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 258(1), pages 70-78.

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