1609	 Scheduling University Course Examinations by Computer	 A new approach to the problem of scheduling course examinations is presented. In principle an examination schedule which requires a minimum number of examination periods and satisfies the constraint that no student be required to take two examinations simultaneously can be found in two steps. First course which may have their examinations scheduled at the same period are grouped together in all possible ways. Then a minimum number of these groups such that each course is included at least once are selected. By removing multiple occurrences of courses and then scheduling each group at a different period a minimal schedule can be obtained. Known algorithms for carrying out these procedures are prohibitively expensive. Approximations to the ideal procedure outlined above are given which yield nonminimal but feasible schedules with a very small expenditure of time. Results of experiments using these techniques are given. These are encouraging and indicate that further experimentation would be worthwhile.
