> My latest idea taken from various replies and munged/improved, is to start by putting the biggest five each in their own child process (that first step is obviously right though difficult to prove) 

Probably because it's obviously wrong?

5+5+2 =12

3+3+3+3=12

> have each worker, on finishing a job, solve the remaining tree for what to take next

That's the best approach if you can avoid race conditions of two workers picking the same job.

> it does look like a partitioning problem but for reals not just integers.

All floats are effectively only integer approximations of real numbers. So?

> The best solution is indeed supposed to be something similar to a neural network,

By whom? Source?

Cheers Rolf
(addicted to the Perl Programming Language :)
Wikisyntax for the Monastery FootballPerl is like chess, only without the dice

In reply to Re^3: Proportional distribution of indivisible items by LanX
in thread Proportional distribution of indivisible items by anonymized user 468275

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