The class starts out as a fully connected undirected weighted graph. Each node represents a student and each edge holds a value that will determine if they are paired or not. The data is persisted to a yaml file called pair_log that is loaded each day and run to create the pairs for the day.
pairs are stored like this:
? - justalisteningman
- giant-squid
: 50If students are not in this list they will be given a default edge weight of 100. Everytime students are paired the weight is naturally halved. Pairing values can be adjusted according to how TA's feel students will pair together.
Pairer uses rgl (Ruby Graph Library).
Install using gem install rgl
pairer.rb is a script that takes up to two arguments being the filenames for a list of students and the pair_log.
podX is a line separated file with a list of students in podX.
pair_log is a yaml formated hash of pair and weights.
Common usage ./pairer.rb pod1 produces an output file in the format pairs_for_podX(Ticks) and updates the pair_log with the history of students adding the current days pairs.
The benefit of keeping a pair_log of all the pairings in every pod is that when pods cross polinate, the pairings for the pod should be generally more unique.