ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Notation for theoretic scheduling problems

Okay kiddo, let me explain what notation for theoretic scheduling problems means. Have you ever had a lot of things to do but not enough time to do them? Well, sometimes companies or people have the same problem. They have a bunch of tasks that they need to get done, but they don't know the best way to do them. That's where scheduling comes in.

Scheduling is like making a to-do list, but for a whole bunch of people and tasks. Imagine you're in charge of a factory with a bunch of employees and a bunch of machines that need to be used to make things. Your goal is to make as many things as possible in a certain amount of time. But you can't just randomly assign tasks to people and hope for the best. You need to figure out the best way to assign tasks to people and machines so that you can finish everything on time.

Now, to help you do this, people came up with something called notation. Notation is like a special language that helps you talk about things in a very specific way. It's like your own secret code that only people who know the code can understand. For scheduling problems, people came up with specific symbols and letters that they use to write down all the information they need to solve the problem.

So in this notation, there are different letters and symbols that mean different things. For example, a "job" might be represented by the letter J, and a "machine" might be represented by the letter M. Then you can use numbers to represent how long it takes to complete that job on that machine. So a J1M2 might mean "job 1 on machine 2". And if it takes 3 hours to complete that job on that machine, you could write J1M2=3.

This notation can get really complex and there are a lot of different symbols and letters that people use to represent different things. But the overall goal is to make it easier to understand and solve scheduling problems. By using this special language, people can communicate more clearly and efficiently about how to assign tasks to people and machines, so that they can get everything done on time.
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