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I am trying to solve a referee assignment problem, but I simply can't think of a way to relate my variable to one of the parameters, and I hope that someone in here can help.

I have the following binary variable

  • x(r,m) = 1 if referee r is assigned match m

and the following parameters:

  • time(m,t) = 1 if match m takes place at time t
  • avail(r,t) = 1 if referee cannot officiate a game at time t

I want to define my x variable to 0, when avail(r,t)=1, but is this even possible?

Niko24
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  • https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assignment_problem, [tag:assignment-problem], https://cs.stackexchange.com/q/12102/755 – D.W. Jan 17 '18 at 17:28
  • Thank you, but it's not really helping me. I'm just curious if it's even possible to relate the variable to that parameter, when the indexes are different. – Niko24 Jan 17 '18 at 19:17

1 Answers1

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Yes.

This appears to be an instance of the assignment problem. In the assignment problem, you construct a bipartite graph. The vertices on the left represent referees. The vertices on the right represent matches. You draw an edge from a referee $r$ to a match $m$ if the referee $r$ is potentially available to officiate in that match. You can use the time() and avail() parameters to work out which edges to draw. Then, a solution to the assignment problem (a maximum matching in this bipartite graph) will represent a way to assign referees to matches. Thus, this captures the restrictions you want to enforce in a simple and natural way.

D.W.
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