abstract = "Construction heuristics play an important role in
solving combinatorial optimisation problems. These
heuristics are usually used to create an initial
solution to the problem which is improved using
optimisation techniques such as metaheuristics. For
examination timetabling and university course
timetabling problems essentially graph colouring
heuristics have been used for this purpose. The process
of deriving heuristics manually for educational
timetabling is a time consuming task. Furthermore,
according to the no free lunch theorem different
heuristics will perform well for different problems and
problem instances. Hence, automating the induction of
construction heuristics will reduce the man hours
involved in creating such heuristics, allow for the
derivation of problem specific heuristics and possibly
result in the derivation of heuristics that humans have
not thought of. This paper presents generation
construction hyper-heuristics for educational
timetabling. The study investigates the automatic
induction of two types of construction heuristics,
namely, arithmetic heuristics and hierarchical
heuristics. Genetic programming is used to evolve
arithmetic heuristics. Genetic programming, genetic
algorithms and the generation of random heuristic
combinations is examined for the generation of
hierarchical heuristics. The hyper-heuristics
generating both types of heuristics are applied to the
examination timetabling and the curriculum based
university course timetabling problems. The evolved
heuristics were found to perform much better than the
existing graph colouring heuristics used for this
domain. Furthermore, it was found that the while the
arithmetic heuristics were more effective for the
examination timetabling problem, the hierarchical
heuristics produced better results than the arithmetic
heuristics for the curriculum based course timetabling
problem. Genetic algorithms proved to be the most
effective at inducing hierarchical heuristics.",
notes = "PATAT 2016. ITC 2007, HHH-GP
Also known as
\cite{oai:eprints.nottingham.ac.uk:45567}",