...Which is weird, because unless they want to prohibit students from taking certain pairs of electives, no two classes should take place simultaneously for any given house and year.
That is an oddity. However, note that they don’t have computers, and setting up a schedule properly for everyone who’s signed up for whatever classes seems like it might well be incredibly difficult without same. It could be that someone saw this and said ‘F* it, just give them time machines.’ That would certainly fit with the level of sense shown so far in magical Britain.
I’ve been to college and suffered the frustration of trying to juggle classes that take place at inconvenient times relative to each other. But we don’t seem to have the conflicts divulged to the students. Hermione “just signs up for everything”, she doesn’t say “gosh, it looks like this class and that one conflict, so I’ll have to pick one—but I can’t choose! Aaah! - Professor McGonagall, isn’t there something you could do?!”
They do, however, have magic. And if there are charms that specifically identify trash to clean, then there must be charms that can organize words on parchment according to a few simple rules.
I assumed that it was well-known since I learnt about it in first-year computing (nearly 7 years ago now..). In retrospect, that was probably a silly assumption.
I should probably have been clearer: the reason classes are often scheduled at the same time is because it’s impossible not to. You have some amount of staff, each of whom have to teach some amount of lower level and/or elective classes, and then you have a couple hundred students each of whom pick 5-7 (or whatever it is, I haven’t read the books recently) electives in whatever combination most appeals to them. The chances of not having a collision anywhere in the whole timetable are pretty damn low. Non-magical schools deal with collisions by forcing students with unpopular combinations to change one of their options (which is what my school did), or by offering a an extra class during lunch or outside regular school hours (which I’ve heard of other schools doing)
They do, however, have magic. And if there are charms that specifically identify trash to clean, then there must be charms that can organize words on parchment according to a few simple rules.
And house elves. There are almost certainly spirits of intellect they could summon too! If not, they have had time to do plenty of selective breeding on their chattel. That said… HP wizard authorities are really thick when it comes to these things.
It’s not that weird. School timetabling is hard (probably NP-hard, since the best way to do it by computer is stimulated annealing followed by human tweaks. In reality it’s pretty much always done entirely by hand), and it’s normal in regular schools for uncommon elective pairs (for example, computing and art) to be scheduled at the same time.
...Which is weird, because unless they want to prohibit students from taking certain pairs of electives, no two classes should take place simultaneously for any given house and year.
That is an oddity. However, note that they don’t have computers, and setting up a schedule properly for everyone who’s signed up for whatever classes seems like it might well be incredibly difficult without same. It could be that someone saw this and said ‘F* it, just give them time machines.’ That would certainly fit with the level of sense shown so far in magical Britain.
I now declare this MoR!canon.
I’ve been to college and suffered the frustration of trying to juggle classes that take place at inconvenient times relative to each other. But we don’t seem to have the conflicts divulged to the students. Hermione “just signs up for everything”, she doesn’t say “gosh, it looks like this class and that one conflict, so I’ll have to pick one—but I can’t choose! Aaah! - Professor McGonagall, isn’t there something you could do?!”
They do, however, have magic. And if there are charms that specifically identify trash to clean, then there must be charms that can organize words on parchment according to a few simple rules.
The rules are not that simple. School timetabling is NP-hard and even stimulated annealing is unlikely to get it completely correct.
The rules are simple. So are the rules for Go.
I had to look up whether that was, in fact, a new kind of optimisation algorithm. It certainly sounds like it should be. ;)
I assumed that it was well-known since I learnt about it in first-year computing (nearly 7 years ago now..). In retrospect, that was probably a silly assumption.
I think the joke is that you wrote “stimulated annealing” rather than “simulated annealing”.
Oh! I always that was a valid alternate spelling of the same word. My bad.
Almost unrelated words. From thefreedictionary.com: simulate stimulate.
Ok, objection noted. My first sentence, however, stands and they still have magic.
Though this might be a matter similar to the clocks—nobody has thought of doing it, so it hasn’t been done.
I should probably have been clearer: the reason classes are often scheduled at the same time is because it’s impossible not to. You have some amount of staff, each of whom have to teach some amount of lower level and/or elective classes, and then you have a couple hundred students each of whom pick 5-7 (or whatever it is, I haven’t read the books recently) electives in whatever combination most appeals to them. The chances of not having a collision anywhere in the whole timetable are pretty damn low. Non-magical schools deal with collisions by forcing students with unpopular combinations to change one of their options (which is what my school did), or by offering a an extra class during lunch or outside regular school hours (which I’ve heard of other schools doing)
And house elves. There are almost certainly spirits of intellect they could summon too! If not, they have had time to do plenty of selective breeding on their chattel. That said… HP wizard authorities are really thick when it comes to these things.
It’s not that weird. School timetabling is hard (probably NP-hard, since the best way to do it by computer is stimulated annealing followed by human tweaks. In reality it’s pretty much always done entirely by hand), and it’s normal in regular schools for uncommon elective pairs (for example, computing and art) to be scheduled at the same time.