Big Bang-Big Crunch Optimization Algorithm to
Solve the Course Timetabling Problem
Ghaith M. Jaradat
Data Mining and Optimization Research Group
The National University of Malaysia
B.B.Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
gm45973@ftsm.ukm.my
Abstract— In this study, we present the Big Bang-Big Crunch
(BB-BC) method to solve the post-enrolment course
timetabling problem. This method is derived from one of the
evolution of the universe theories in physics and astronomy.
The BB-BC theory involves two phases (Big Bang and Big
Crunch). The Big Bang phase feeds the Big Crunch phase with
many inputs and the Big Crunch phase is the shrinking destiny
of the universe into singularity. Generally, the BB-BC
algorithm generates a population of random initial solutions in
the Big Bang phase and shrinks those solutions to a single good
quality solution represented by a centre of mass. Experimental
results show that the BB-BC can produce good quality
solutions and comparable with some of the methods applied in
the literature (with regards to Socha’s benchmark instances).
Keywords- big bang-big crunch; post-enrolment course
timetabling problem;
I. INTRODUCTION
The post-enrolment course timetabling problem mainly
comprises of assigning a set of courses, and students to a
specific number of timeslots and rooms in a week, while
satisfying some constraints [1]. There are two types of
constraints: hard and soft. In order to produce a feasible
timetable, all of the hard constraints must be satisfied.
Whereas, the violation of the soft constraints must be
minimized in order to produce a good quality timetable.
Each violation of soft constraints will incur a penalty cost
(lower penalty value indicates good quality solution).
The university course timetabling problems are
considered as NP-hard problems which are difficult to solve
for optimality [2]. For such complex search and
combinatorial optimization problems, natural inspired
(including population-based) approaches are among the
methods that were proved to be promised ones in handling
these problems [3].
During the last decade, various nature inspired
approaches have been intensively applied to solve course
timetabling problem. Some of the common techniques are
the Ant Colony Optimization [1] [4], Simulated Annealing
and Genetic Algorithm [5].
However, there are many other nature inspired
approaches that have not been applied in course timetabling
problem. Such as, BB-BC (Big Bang-Big Crunch). BB-BC
has been applied to some combinatorial optimization
978-1-4244-8136-1/10/$26.00 2010
c IEEE
Masri Ayob
Data Mining and Optimization Research Group
The National University of Malaysia
B.B.Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
masri@ftsm.ukm.my
problems. For example, Erol and Eksin [6] applied the
original BB-BC on truss optimization problem, and
compared it against genetic algorithm (GA) and an improved
GA called Combat-GA (CGA). They showed that the BB-
BC outperformed the CGA in most of the test functions
instances in terms of quality and speed. In the other work,
Kaveh and Talatahari [7] compared the BB-BC against
particle swarm optimization (PSO), harmony search (HS),
and ACO. [6, 7] They showed that the performance of the
BB-BC demonstrates superiority over PSO, HS and ACO in
terms of computational time and the quality of obtained
solutions.
Therefore, in this study, we modify the BB-BC algorithm
to solve the course timetabling problem. We have chosen
this approach due to: less parameterized structure, the ability
to distribute the search over a various number of solutions
instead of one, and the capability of quick convergence even
in the existence of multiple local minima [8]. Hopefully this
enables the search to rapidly find good quality solutions in
different regions in the search space. This study aims to
investigate the performance of the BB-BC in solving the
course timetabling problem. In order to demonstrate the
performance of our algorithm, we test it over the post-
enrolment course timetabling test datasets introduced by [1].
We compare them with other related methods reported in the
literature.
II. PROBLEM DESCRIPTION
In this study, we test our algorithm on the course
timetabling instances that were introduced by Socha et al.
[1]. The characteristics of Socha’s instances are:
x A set of N courses that need to be scheduled into 5
working days a week of 9 timeslots each day, in
which, T=45 timeslots,
x A set of R rooms is given, in which, each room has a
number of F features including their capacities
required by the course,
x A number of M students who will attend the course.
Each student enrolled a number of courses.
The hard constraints for this dataset are:
H1: No student attends more than one course at the same
time;
H2: The room is big enough for all the attending students
1448
 and satisfies all the features required by the assigned TABLE I. COMPARISON BETWEEN MA AND BB-BC

course; Features Memetic BB-BC

H3: Only one course is assigned into each room at any
timeslot. Population Chromosomes, large size Stellar objects, large size
A feasible timetable is one in which all courses have Probabilistic selection in Probabilistic selection in
Reproduction
been assigned to timeslots and rooms (i.e. all hard constraints Hamming space Euclidean space
are satisfied). The quality of timetable is measured (as in [5]) Crossover & mutation rely No combinations,
Combination
on randomization mutation is a perturbation
by penalising equally each violation of the following soft
Strongest gravitational
constraint (i.e. penalty cost=1 times the number of students Evolution Survival of the fittest
pole
involved for each violation):
Local Search Significant intensification Significant intensification
S1: A student should not has a class in the last slot of the
day; Search update Randomized selection Pseudo- random selection
S2: A student should not has more than two classes Memory use Memory less Memory less
consecutively; Search Limited information about Limited information about
S3: A student should not has a single class on a day. experience solution’s components solution’s components
The aim is to minimize the violation of the soft Diversification Mutation Euclidean distances
constraints which represent the quality of the timetable.
Selection, Crossover,
More information about the problem's instances can be found Intensification
Replacement
Centre of mass
in [1].
III. THE BIG BANG-BIG CRUNCH ALGORITHM Generally, our algorithm differs from the original BB-BC
algorithm [6] in term of representing exploration and
BB-BC algorithm is derived from one of the evolution of exploitation phases (solution construction and improvement).
the universe theories in physics and astronomy, describing That is: (i) We exploit a collection of elite solutions to
how the universe was created, evolved and how would end. generate new promising population in successive Big Bang
The BB-BC theory involves two phases: Big Bang and Big phases, where the elite collection contains best found
Crunch. The Big Bang phase is a set of procedures of energy solutions based on their quality. Whereas, the original BB-
dissipation in nature term of disordering and randomness. BC rebuilding new solutions from scratch to generate new
The Big Crunch phase is a procedure that randomly generation. (ii) We employ variable neighborhood structures
distributes particles and draws them into an order. and simple descent heuristic (as a local search), whilst [6]
The Big Bang and Big Crunch phases represent the large examined solution neighbors either using greedy descent or
search space exploration and best solution exploitation, steepest descent. (iii) We simply use the quality of the
respectively. The Big Bang phase (energy dissipation) generated solutions to represent the centre of mass (i.e. the
randomly generates an initial population of feasible best quality solution) and maximum, minimum cost values of
candidate solutions (similar to the GA in respect to solutions in the elite pool to determine the boundaries
generating a random initial population). Generally, this phase (allowable space) of the successive population. Whereas, the
represents the search space exploration process. original BB-BC calculates solutions’ positions relatively to
The populations produced by the Big Bang phase will be the centre of mass in the search space, and the magnitude of
gradually reduce in Big Crunch phase. This aims to reduce gravitational attraction that affects the population to
computational time and have quick convergence, while converge toward the centre of mass in the Euclidean space
maintaining search diversity and quality of solutions. The (refer to equation 2 in [6]).
cost function value of a candidate solution in the population The new off-springs for the successive iteration Big Bang
represents a mass. In this work, we represent the best phase (and in Big Crunch phase) are normally distributed
candidate solution as the centre of mass (as recommended by around the centre of mass (Cc) as in [6] (see Eq. 1):
[6]). The centre of mass will attract other solutions. This
because solutions with greater mass (in our case smaller C inew Cc  V (1)
penalty cost) are potentially more closer to the centre of the
search space (universe) or to the point where the Big Crunch
where Cinew is the new candidate solution i; and ı is a
will converge.
Specifically, the BB-BC algorithm works with a standard deviation of a normal distribution. The standard
population of variable size (e.g. stellar objects) [8]. It can deviation decreases as the iterations elapse according to the
maintain the diversity of the search, in which it may avoid following formula (Eq. 2) as in [6]:
being trapped in local optimum, and can converge in a
reasonable speed [9]. It is alike memetic (GA + local search) r D ( C max  C min ) D
V ,0  1 (2)
except it does not involve solutions combination (e.g. k k
crossover) and the mutation is represented by solution’s
perturbations. The following table summarizes the where r is a random number between [0,1], Į is a
comparison between memetic and BB-BC algorithms. reduction rate of the size of the search space; Cmax and Cmin
are the upper and lower limits of the elite pool; and k is the

2010 10th International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications 1449
number of iterations. Therefore, the new off-spring is
generated as in (Eq. 1) and within the upper and lower
bounds. The lower and upper limits are necessary to control
the solutions distribution. In this work, we eliminate r by
fixing its value to 1, since it has shown no significant impact
on the population reduction process in our preliminary
experiments.
At the end of the Big Crunch phase (i.e. when a
population size reduce to one solution), a new generation
will be generated from the elite pool of the previous
generations with the same population size (as in the first
generation), and starting with the previous centre of mass.
That is, the algorithm will regenerate a new candidate
solution population from the elite pool (by performing
shaking to the solution), bounded by the maximum and
minimum of the solutions’ cost values of the previous
generation.
In order to include possible good quality solutions, we
allow an extended lower limit. That is, all improve solutions
are allowed (although they are out of the boundary), the
upper limit is restricted so as to limit accepting worse
solution.
The pseudo code of our BB-BC algorithm for course
timetabling problem is shown in Figure 1. Our algorithm (the
BB-BC) starts with the construction phase (Big Bang) that
constructs a population of N feasible candidate solutions Ci
from scratch (Step 1) for the first generation. In this study,
we use a combination of saturation degree and largest
weighted degree [10] with a repair procedure as in [11] to
rectify the infeasible solutions. For the successive Big Bang
phase, we generate new population from the elite pool
(without including the elite solutions themselves in the new
population) by performing shaking to solutions in the pool
bounded by the upper and lower cost values of solutions in
the elite pool.
Big Bang phase (solutions construction):
Step 1: Generate population (construct solutions from scratch for
the first generation, or else generate new population
from the elite pool);
Big Crunch phase (Local Search move):
Repeat
Step2: Generate some neighbors for all solutions in the
population and replace the parent with its best off-
spring for each solution in the population;
Step 3: Find the centre of mass;
Step 4: Apply local search to the centre of mass;
Step 5: Update the elite pool and the best found solution;
Step 6: Eliminating some poor quality solutions;
Until population size is reduced to a single solution;
Step 7: Return to Step 1 if stopping criterion is not met;
Step 8: Return the best found solution.
Figure 1. The pseudo code of our BB-BC algorithm for the course
timetabling problem
Then, we employ the Big Crunch phase (improvement),
where first we generate some neighbors from all solutions in
the population including the centre of mass by performing
simple perturbations. Each solution (parent) will be replaced
1450 2010 10th International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications
with the best off-spring in order to have better quality
solutions in successive population, while maintaining
diversity of the search. This may avoid premature
convergence of the search (Step 2). In (Step 3) we determine
the centre of mass Cc based on the best solution cost value
found, Cbest. The centre of mass is further improved by
applying a simple descent heuristic for a predefined number
of non-improvement iterations (Step 4). An elite pool
(collection) is created/updated in (Step 5), where the best
solutions (centre of mass) of the previous generations are
stored in the elite pool and will be exploited as reference
solutions for the Big Bang phase in successive iterations. In
this work, we use a fixed size of elite pool, where in the first
iteration; some good solutions are selected to be included in
the pool. At each iteration, the elite pool is updated by
replacing the worst solution cost in the current centre of mass
and solutions. Based on (Eq. 1), the search will gradually
converge to a single solution by reducing the size of the
population (Step 6). This is done by eliminating poor quality
solutions around the centre of mass. The Big Crunch phase is
repeated until the population size is reduced to a single
solution (singularity).
A new Big Bang is commenced (Step 7) by returning to
the first step, where a new population is generated from the
elite pool. That is, by including the elite solutions in the new
population and generating some neighbors from them to
form the new population (rather than generating new
solutions from scratch as in [6]). Our BB-BC algorithm’s
search process is repeated until the stopping criterion is met,
which is, in our work the number of iterations. Finally, the
BB-BC returns the best found solution (Step 8).
In this work, we employed neighborhood structures (as in
[12]) to the whole population including center of mass Cc
(i.e. in Step 1 and Step 3). At each iteration, we generate five
feasible neighbors for each candidate solution in Npop and the
best neighbor is chosen to replace its parent solution for the
next generation Nnewpop.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In this study, we test the BB-BC on Socha’s [1] course
timetabling datasets. The best suited parameter values for our
BB-BC algorithm were chosen based on preliminary
experiments and literature recommendations (as in [6] [8]).
Table II shows the parameter settings that we use in our
work.
The experiments were performed on Intel Pentium Core2
Duo 2.16 GHz processor, using Java NetBeans IDE v 6.8.
We ran our algorithm 25 times for each instance. In the case
of population-based approaches, it is known that the cost
function value is calculated for every candidate solution in
each population, and hence, it has a great impact on the
algorithm’s speed. However, we tested our algorithm under a
relaxed stopping condition (ranges from 30 seconds to 12
hours of computational time based on the instance’s size) not
restricted to the competition’s fixed time limit (474 seconds
calculated by the competition’s computational time estimator
based on our computer’s capability).
 TABLE II. PPARAMETERS SETTINGS USED IN OUR ALGORITHM
Parameter Value
Npop Population size =100 (feasible solutions)
k Number of iterations = 100,000
kls Number of non-improvement iteration = 30
Į Reduction rate = 0.8
Elite_pool Elite pool size = 10
Ns Number of neighbors created in each generation = 5
Elitism Last population solution is forced to be always the best
Table III shows the results obtained from our algorithm
compared to some of the best known results obtained by
other methodologies applied over the Socha’s test instances
in the literature. All of the methodologies presented in Table
III share common features with our algorithm, such as
population-based features, large number of iterations (more
than or equal to 100,000) under a relaxed stopping condition,
and variable neighborhood structures, in which we tried to
make reasonable, fair and meaningful comparisons. Best
results are presented in bold. The statistical readings (in
Table III) are based on the following performance indicators:
the best obtained result (best), the worst (w), the standard
deviation (ı), the median (m), the lower quartile (Q1) and
upper quartile (Q2) of results’ distributions, out of 25 runs on
each instance.
The respected methodologies presented in table III are as
follows: a hybrid evolutionary algorithm HEA (a
combination between GA and a randomized iterative
improvement method) [13]; a genetic algorithm with a
sequential local search (GASLS) and a repair function [11]; a
memetic algorithm (MA) [14]; a guided search GA (GSGA)
[15]; a hybrid electromagnetic-like with force decay rate
great deluge (EMGD) [16]; a max-min ant system (MMAS)
[4]; and an extended version of GSGA (EGSGA) [12].
The results shows that our BB-BC algorithm can
consistently produce good quality timetables, which are
somewhat comparable to some results obtained by other
population-based approaches reported in the literature. For
example, our algorithm has obtained the best results for all
small instances and outperformed all population-based
approaches (presented in table III) in medium5 instance. This
might be due to the following factors: (i) Population size
reduction guarantees search convergence to a local minima
(centre of mass) in the Big Crunch phase, while generating
new population in new Big Bang phase guarantees search
diversity. (ii) Searching some neighbors within the search
space boundaries in the Big Crunch phase may likely to
guarantee a significant solution improvement. (iii)
Maintaining a balance between search diversity and quality.
(iv) Exploiting an elite pool in generating new promising
population in successive Big Bang phases.

TABLE III. COMPUTATIONAL STATISTICS OF THE BB-BC ALGORITHM APPLIED TO THE 11 INSTANCES UNDER RELAXED STOP
CONDITION

Our BB-BC Algorithm Other Population-based approaches

GA GS EM MM EGS
Dataset best Q1 m ı Q2 w HEA MA
SLS GA GD AS GA
small1 0 0 2 1.29 2 4 0 2 0 0 0 1 0
small2 0 0 1 1.11 2 4 0 4 0 0 0 3 0
small3 0 1 2 1.76 3 7 0 2 0 0 0 1 0
small4 0 0 1 .7 1 2 0 0 0 0 0 1 0
small5 0 1 1 .7 2 2 0 4 0 0 0 0 0
medium1 99 104 108 7.15 114 124 221 254 227 240 96 195 139
medium2 102 109 116 9.72 125 134 147 285 180 160 96 184 92
medium3 158 171 183 19.52 204 219 246 251 235 242 135 248 122
medium4 86 101 106 11.01 112 129 165 321 142 158 79 164.5 98
medium5 79 87 97 12.24 108 120 130 276 200 124 87 219.5 116
large 768 794 837 45.96 865 922 529 1027 - 801 683 851.5 615

According to [17], the problem’s difficulty (varies
from dataset to another), which directly affects the
performance of the algorithm in term of easiness of
solving the problem. In our algorithm, the use of least
saturation degree and largest weighted degree heuristics
has overcome the problem’s difficulty in constructing an
initial population of feasible solutions. Combinations of
two low-level heuristics increase the probability of
obtaining a feasible solution and probably with a higher
fitness cost than other meta-heuristics do [10]. A higher
fitness cost of an initial solution is most likely to converge
toward better quality solution than starting with low fitness
cost [17]. Moreover, our BB-BC algorithm managed to
maintain feasibility of solutions during the search process
and scanning different feasible regions in the search space.
This is achieved by producing new solutions from the elite
pool and reducing population’s size in order to draw the
next generation into an ordered manner of distribution
which may contains diverse solutions. This enables the
algorithm to escape the local minima and restart the search
effectively, and explores different regions of the search
space even it has a rapid and aggressive convergence.

2010 10th International Conference on Intelligent Systems Design and Applications 1451
 V. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK
The overall goal of this study was to investigate a
population-based Big Bang-Big Crunch algorithm for
solving the post-enrolment course timetabling problem
through exploiting an elite pool of good quality to
maintain diversity of the search and to determine the
boundaries of the new population. A proportional
reduction of the population as the number of iterations
elapses ensures the search convergence while maintaining
a balance between good quality and diverse solutions. By
utilizing the capabilities of a population-based approach in
large search space exploration and best solutions
exploitation using neighborhood structures [3], our
experimental results indicated that BB-BC is able to
produce feasible and good quality solutions and are
competitive to some reported results in the literature
applied to the Socha’s benchmark instances.
An advantage of BB-BC is that the capability of
exploration and exploitation of multiple solutions.
Moreover, since it has a fast solution convergence
behavior, it is most likely to explore a number of different
regions in the search space in a short time due to the
population size reduction and regeneration.
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