#8 📈 I just got married and I had to solve an optimization problem… At the wedding!

Getting married is a piece of cake, but seating your guests? That's the real challenge!

Seating arrangements can make or break a wedding.

It's like a dance, ensuring that diverse groups of friends and family come together harmoniously. Mismatched leave attendees bored or uncomfortable.

Today we’ll see in Feasible how mathematical optimization can create seating charts that will blow your guests away.

You might think it's not a big deal, but there are even scientific articles about it.

Let's go for it! 😎

The Delicate Art of Seating Guests

Imagine your dream wedding: friends and family gathered, love in the air, and everyone celebrating your union.

But creating a harmonious atmosphere for all can be quite the challenge, especially when it comes to seating arrangements. One wrong move, and you could end up with awkward encounters, discomfort, or even conflicts among your guests. It's essential to carefully consider the preferences and dynamics of your attendees to ensure an enjoyable experience for everyone.

You’ll see.

For just 100 guests to be seated at 10 tables of 10 people each, there are more possible seating combinations than atoms in the universe! Yes, you read that right. But how can we calculate the exact number? (if you are curious enough you can go to the formula at the end)¹

So if we had 100 guests and 10 tables with 10 seats each to seat them, we would have:

6,495465689×10⁸⁵ possible combinations

And there are around 10⁸⁰ atoms in the universe. Or say it different: a 1 followed by 80 0s…

100000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.

So add it 5 more 0s and then you get the total possible combinations for your wedding -for just 100 guests!

Now your problem of seating guests at your wedding has come to a totally different dimension, right? You know exactly why is so difficult to do that part of the wedding -apart from some guests asking you to be seated together and so on.

Ok so how can we define the problem in a more analytical way? What we have is: