An introduction of preference based stepping ahead firefly algorithm for the uncapacitated examination timetabling
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In recent times, there has been a growing attention to intelligent optimization algorithms centred on swarm principles such as the firefly algorithm (FA). It was proposed for the continuous domain that mimics the attraction of fireflies to flashing light and has been used in discrete domainsviamodification. A discrete domain that is a major challenge in most higher education institutes (HEI) is examination timetabling. This article presents a new methodology based on FA for uncapacitated examination timetabling problems (UETP) where the proposed method is an extension of earlier work by the authors on the continuous domain. UETP is considered in this article as it is a university examination timetabling problem, which is still an active research area and has not been solved by FA algorithm as per authors knowledge. The proposed method concentrates on solving the initial solution using discrete FA where it consolidates the reordering of examinations and slots through a heuristic ordering known as neighborhood search. Three neighborhoods are employed in this research, where one is used during the initialization phase while two are utilized during solution improvement phase. Later, through preference parameters, a novel stepping ahead mechanism is used, which employs neighborhood searches built on previous searches. The proposed method is tested with 12 UETP problems where the preference based stepping ahead FA creates comparative results to the best ones available in the literature for the Toronto exam timetabling dataset. The results obtained are proof of concept at the preliminary stage and require further experiments on other educational datasets such as the second international timetable competition benchmark sets. The newly introduced preference based stepping ahead mechanism takes advantage of the current best solution space where it exploits the solution space for better solutions. This paves the way for researchers to utilize the mechanism in other domains such as robotics,etc.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".