8 teams, 84 games - Part 6

Where last left off we had just moved one pair of series, switching the positions of a couple series involving teams 3 & 4 in halfweeks 22 & 26 to try to improvement their homestands/roadtrips.

That left us with "dh" instances for those teams - they each now have two 4-game series in one week (halfweeks 21 & 22).  We are aiming to not have any actual doubleheaders, so we will want to adjust to move one game for each of those teams in that week.  The simplest thing would be to move the 4-game series now in halfweek 22 (that was originally in halfweek 26).  We could simply switch that with the 3-game series that are also 4@3 in halfweeks 9 & 16.  That would be fine.  But we could introduce more variation in offdays by removing the extra games for teams 3 & 4 from their halfweek 21 series.  We would do that by switching out those 4-game series from there with 3-game series between the same pairs of teams from other places in the schedule grid.

Very often the case is like that - one improvement does what it intended toward achieving some target (like decreasing the number of single-series homestands/roadtrips, but lead to another thing to address (like creating instances of too many games in a week).  There can often be quite a chain - doing change A creates a need or benefit to doing change B, which compels change C, which ...  Sometimes things end up getting worse such that the preferred action becomes erasing all those changes, then doing something different instead of that original change A.

I am just going to skip all the way to the end rather than show individually at lot more of the changes made.  Here is a side-by-side of the grid (with teams 3 & 4 highlighted) before any changes at all, then after all the changes done to get the grid into a good overall condition with all the stats at satisfactory levels.

Here is a gif version that shows going back and forth between before and after.  From that it may be easier to see the changes made to flip-flop series in different places, juggle the 3-game & 4-game series, and tweak the day-move checkboxes.

That stats at the bottom of the grid are all "OK" in the after picture.  Some things are very precise, like getting the counts of home & away games.  The thresholds for others are rather arbitrary, like for single_series.  There hsa to be some decision of "good enough" to decide to quit tinkering.

In the after picture team 4 has the green indicator on its series for halfweek 25.  That indicates the series there is at home and could be bumped to start a day later to have the offday before the series after a road series rather than in the middle of the homestand as it sits now.  I like to do that as a matter of personal preference.  But there is something blocking that change.

Moving that 2@4 series to start a day later (from Mon-Wed to Tue-Thu) would clash for team 2 with its 4-game series in halfweek 26 covering Thu-Sun.  That 4-game series of 2@1 could be switched with one of the 3-game series for 2@1 in halfweek 9 or 13.  But maybe I prefer the way the 4-game series (and thus offdays) are and leaving in that mid-homestand offday.

So it is important to have targets and an endpoint in mind.  After all stats warnings are cleared, maybe I glance around for more improvements, but it is good enough.