Applying the Knuth-Plass algorithm (or something better?) to read two books with different length and amount of chapters in parallel
- by user147133
I have a Bible reading plan that covers the whole Bible in 180 days. For the most of the time, I read 5 chapters in the Old Testament and 1 or 2 (1.5) chapters in the New Testament each day. The problem is that some chapters are longer than others (for example Psalm 119 which is 7 times longer than a average chapter in the Bible), and the plan I'm following doesn't take that in count. I end up with some days having a lot more to read than others.
I thought I could use programming to make myself a better plan. I have a datastructure with a list of all chapters in the bible and their length in number of lines. (I found that the number of lines is the best criteria, but it could have been number of verses or number of words as well)
I then started to think about this problem as a line wrap problem. Think of a chapter like a word, a day like a line and the whole plan as a paragraph. The "length" of a word (a chapter) is the number of lines in that chapter. I could then generate the best possible reading plan by applying a simplified Knuth-Plass algorithm to find the best breakpoints.
This works well if I want to read the Bible from beginning to end. But I want to read a little from the new testament each day in parallel with the old testament. Of course I can run the Knuth-Plass algorithm on the Old Testament first, then on the New Testament and get two separate plans. But those plans merged is not a optimal plan. Worst-case days (days with extra much reading) in the New Testament plan will randomly occur on the same days as the worst-case days in the Old Testament.
Since the New Testament have about 180*1.5 chapters, the plan is generally to read one chapter the first day, two the second, one the third etc... And I would like the plan for the Old Testament to compensate for this alternating length.
So I will need a new and better algorithm, or I will have to use the Knuth-Plass algorithm in a way that I've not figured out.
I think this could be a interesting and challenging nut for people interested in algorithms, so therefore I wanted to see if any of you have a good solution in mind.
