School timetable

[1] Prior to the introduction of operations research and management science methodologies, school timetables had to be generated by hand.

When timetables are constructed by hand, the process is often 10% mathematics and 90% politics,[2] leading to errors, inefficiencies, and resentment among teachers and students.

At large universities, there are additional constraints that must be considered, such as taking into account the time students need to walk from one end of the campus to the other.

[1] In 1976, for example, Gunther Schmidt and Thomas Ströhlein formalized the STP with an iterative algorithm using logical matrices and hypergraphs.

[4] Nelishia Pillay published a comprehensive survey paper of these algorithms in 2014,[5] including a table of methods for solving the school timetabling problem.