Hello. My name is Erica, and I'm a senior Computer Science major at West Virginia Wesleyan College. I need some help getting started on the research for my senior project this semester, and I thought this would be a good place to ask for suggestions.
First of all, senior project is a year-long course; first semester is for doing research and writing a corresponding research paper, and second semester is for physically building or coding or creating the project itself. My problem is that I think I have too much work for second semester and not enough work for first semester (in other words, it's going to be a big program to write, but I don't have enough information to write a 30-some page paper about it first).
My idea is to write a program that makes up employee work schedules. I work at a restaurant, and the manager makes up the weekly schedule by hand. There are always mistakes, so I thought a program that generates a schedule would be a good idea. For now I'm not concerned about a graphical user interface or anything like that -- to write this paper, I need research on the concepts behind the program. My professor said that I should look into the algorithms used in such a program. I'll be programming in Java, but any algorithms in any computer language (or even better, in pseudocode or just text) will do for now to get me started. Do any of you know of any algorithms that do this sort of thing? The idea for now is that the manager will be able to input information about his/her employees (ID number, name, address, restrictions, position, etc) and information about shifts (length, beginning and ending hours, number of shifts per day, etc), and employees will be able to request days off. The manager will then decide which requests to approve, and the program will generate an employee work schedule based on this information. Of course there will be more to it than that -- there are weekends, holidays, changes in the schedule after it's made, etc -- but that's all for next semester. For now I need information about algorithms that are related to this idea. (As a side note, I was also wondering if there were some sort of program or algorithm that would generate calendar dates -- because the schedule will be different depending on which month of the year it is, etc. If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know.)
As I'm sure most of you know, finding "credible sources" is all-important in writing a research paper. My professor simply told me that the information I need is "out there," so I'm having trouble figuring out where to start. Any websites or textbooks or articles or anything you can think of that relates to the ideas I described above would be greatly appreciated.
Also, if any of you know of another community here on LJ or elsewhere on the Internet that might be able to help me, please let me know.
Thanks so much,
Erica
(Crossposted to
algorithms)
First of all, senior project is a year-long course; first semester is for doing research and writing a corresponding research paper, and second semester is for physically building or coding or creating the project itself. My problem is that I think I have too much work for second semester and not enough work for first semester (in other words, it's going to be a big program to write, but I don't have enough information to write a 30-some page paper about it first).
My idea is to write a program that makes up employee work schedules. I work at a restaurant, and the manager makes up the weekly schedule by hand. There are always mistakes, so I thought a program that generates a schedule would be a good idea. For now I'm not concerned about a graphical user interface or anything like that -- to write this paper, I need research on the concepts behind the program. My professor said that I should look into the algorithms used in such a program. I'll be programming in Java, but any algorithms in any computer language (or even better, in pseudocode or just text) will do for now to get me started. Do any of you know of any algorithms that do this sort of thing? The idea for now is that the manager will be able to input information about his/her employees (ID number, name, address, restrictions, position, etc) and information about shifts (length, beginning and ending hours, number of shifts per day, etc), and employees will be able to request days off. The manager will then decide which requests to approve, and the program will generate an employee work schedule based on this information. Of course there will be more to it than that -- there are weekends, holidays, changes in the schedule after it's made, etc -- but that's all for next semester. For now I need information about algorithms that are related to this idea. (As a side note, I was also wondering if there were some sort of program or algorithm that would generate calendar dates -- because the schedule will be different depending on which month of the year it is, etc. If anyone knows anything about this, please let me know.)
As I'm sure most of you know, finding "credible sources" is all-important in writing a research paper. My professor simply told me that the information I need is "out there," so I'm having trouble figuring out where to start. Any websites or textbooks or articles or anything you can think of that relates to the ideas I described above would be greatly appreciated.
Also, if any of you know of another community here on LJ or elsewhere on the Internet that might be able to help me, please let me know.
Thanks so much,
Erica
(Crossposted to
algorithms) 