Thread: 20 kids into playgroups of 4

Hi all,

Wonder if anyone can help me out. My girl have started in school, and the (we) parents have agreed that we want to setup play-groups of 4 kids into each group. Plan is that the group should swoop so that all kids will play with each other 3 times each. It should be possible within 20 rounds/dates.

The time frame is every 2. week, but that is not relevant as I will change the dates/weeks to consider vacaton/holidays etc.

What I need is a good plan on how I can ensure all kids have played with each other approx 3 times each.

Can anyone help me out here ?

Thanks,

Jan

I work in an office of about 600 people, 8 of us have made it into the office. So I've decided I'm going to spend my day trying an attempt this problem. I can't do it mathematically. So I'm using Excel.

I've created a work book which has each play date along the top and each child along the side. There are then 3 validation tests to ensure they meet your criteria.

I've created 5 groups called a,b,c,d,e so each child needs to appear in each group 4 times. And 4 groups within each play date.

There's another validation where you add a childs name and it counts the number of times those children appear in the same group at the same time.

I'm just populating the schedule with different patterns, I've tried a few so far and none work. I will continue to try but I thought you might like to try my method.

Thanks a lot for your help - very much appreciated !!!
I have also thoughts that Excel should be able to fix this for me, but I have runned into the wall to get it to work.
Also tried to get help in an Excel forum, but with no luck..

I cannot open the attached Excel sheet at work, my company firewall don't allow this - so I have to wait until tonight - but I appreciate your help.

Thanks a lot in advance.

Jan

I can't do it!

I've instead populated each child randomly, and created a loop which tests random populations. If it finds one it will stop.

It's running in the background, hopefully it will work it out.

Thanks for your help anyway.
I will look at the Excl sheet tonight...

If anyone else, will make a try to make this happen, I would be happy !

Jan

Originally Posted by RhysGM

I can't do it!

It's running in the background, hopefully it will work it out.

Hi RhysGM

It has been running all night, nine hours without any luck. Can I set the terms down to minimus 3 or 2 times playdates ?