So let me describe the problem of my project Module:
I have a room of capacity 50.
10 rows 5 columns.
I have 6 different flavors available, and an unlimited amount of elements for each flavor.
I need to make a seating Plan so that no one of same flavor sits nearby (front - back - diagonal).
What are the best Sets of algorithm I can use to solve this problem?
And if possible please describe the steps of the algorithm.
Algorithm
For this specific example, you can just use greedy algorithm. Iterate over rows and columns and at each seat set any flavor that doesn't clash with already seated flavors.
Proof
xxxxxxxxxx
xxxxxxxxxx
xxxo......
..........
..........
x - already seated
o - currently seating
. - empty
Lets say we iterate in row by row, left to right fashion. When we are making new seating, this place has at most 4 already seated neighbors (look at the image above). As we have 6 flavors, there will always exist one, which is different to all others. As this is true for every seating we make, we can fill all 50 spaces.
Generalisation
For general values, this problem might be rather tricky, I dare to claim even NP-hard.
A good set of algorithms are graph coloring, specifically vertex coloring algorithms. You need to think of the chairs as vertices with edges to all neighboring chairs.
The given problem is a Constraint Satisfaction Problem. In particular (using the terminology used here):
The set of variables X is made of the seats (in your case we have 50 seats correspond to a set of 50 variables, one for each seat)
The sets of domain values D is a set of 50 domains (1 for each variable), each of which contains a set of 6 values (the 6 different flavours).
The set of constraints is made up like this C1 := (X[0,0] != X[0,1]); C2 := (X[0,0] != X[1,0]); C3 := (X[0,0] != X[1,1]) and so on.
Personally I would suggest to use Forward Checking in order to reduce complexity.
The resulting algorithm (a simplified version without rollback of the assignment as it's unnecessary for this specific problem) would look something like this:
initialize_domains_for_each_variable; // set the 6 available flavours
for(int i = 0; i < 10; i++){
for(int j = 0; j < 5; j++){
seats[i,j].flavour = seats[i,j].possible_flavours[0];
// look ahead and eliminate possible conflicts
remove_this_flavour_from_surrounding_seats_possible_flavours;
}
}
Doing it like this will ensure that no conflict arises because you'll have at least 2 available flavours for each seat. We visit the seats from left to right and from top to bottom so for each seat we have to check which assignment does not conflict with the previously completed assignments. In the general case we will have:
seat[i,j].available_flavours = available_flavours - seat[i-1,j+1].flavour - seat[i-1,j].flavour - seat[i-1,j-1].flavour - seat[i,j-1].flavour
that has 2 items. In the borders of the matrix you will have more available flavours because the items it can conflict with are 2 (in the case of a left border), 3 (in the case of a right border not in the first row), or 1 (in the case of the top right element, the right border of the first row).
Be aware that using the above algorithm will only use 5 flavours (the bare minimum). If you have the necessity of using 6 flavours you will have to adapt the algorithm.
Related
Problem:
Given a set of group registrations, each for a varying number of people (1-7),
and a set of seating groups (immutable, at least 2m apart) varying from 1-4 seats,
I'd like to find the optimal assignment of people groups to seating groups:
People groups may be split among several seating groups (though preferably not)
Seating groups may not be shared by different people groups
(optional) the assignment should minimize the number of 'wasted' seats, i.e. maximize the number of seats in empty seating groups
(ideally it should run from within a Google Apps script, so memory and computational complexity should be as small as possible)
First attempt:
I'm interested in the decision problem (is it feasible?) as well as the optimization problem (see optional optimization function). I've modeled it as a SAT problem, but this does not find an optimal solution.
For this reason, I've tried to model it as an optimization problem. I'm thinking along the lines of a (remote) variation of multiple-knapsack, but I haven't been able to name it yet:
items: seating groups (size -> weight)
knapsacks: people groups (size -> container size)
constraint: combined item weight >= container size
optimization: minimize the number of items
As you can see, the constraint and optimization are inverted compared to the standard problem. So my question is: Am I on the right track here or would you go about it another way? If it's correct, does this optimization problem have a name?
You could approach this as an Integer Linear Programming Problem, defined as follows:
let P = the set of people groups, people group i consists of p_i people;
let T = the set of tables, table j has t_j places;
let x_ij be 1 if people from people group i are placed at table j, 0 otherwise
let M be a large penalty factor for empty seats
let N be a large penalty factor for splitting groups
// # of free spaces = # unavailable - # occupied
// every time a group uses more than one table,
// a penalty of N * (#tables - 1) is incurred
min M * [SUM_j(SUM_i[x_ij] * t_j) - SUM_i(p_i)] + N * SUM_i[(SUM_j(x_ij) - 1)]
// at most one group per table
s.t. SUM_i(x_ij) <= 1 for all j
// every group has enough seats
SUM_j(x_ij * t_j) = p_i for all i
0 <= x_ij <= 1
Although this minimises the number of empty seats, it does not minimise the number of tables used or maximise the number of groups admitted. If you'd like to do that, you could expand the objective function by adding a penalty for every group turned away.
ILPs are NP-hard, so without the right solvers, it might not be possible to make this run with Google Apps. I have no experience with that, so I'm afraid I can't help you. But there are some methods to reduce your search space.
One would be through something called column generation. Here, the problem is split into two parts. The complex master problem is your main research question, but instead of the entire solution space, it tries to find the optimum from different candidate assignments (or columns).
The goal is then to define a subproblem that recommends these new potential solutions that are then incorporated in the master problem. The power of a good subproblem is that it should be reducable to a simpler model, like Knapsack or Dijkstra.
I have a problem with optimal placing of rectangular objects with different size and amount in rectangular container. The problem can be perfectly solved with the one of 2D bin packing algorithms but only on empty container. For me it is almost always not a case. My containers can have a restricted places where no object can be placed.
Packing example
Surely I am not the first one who encountered this kind of problem and I hope someone already developed a good solution for it. Anything is good: book references, articles, code snippets, etc.
Formal algorithms are prefered upon neural networks and this kind of things.
One possible way to solve it is with integer linear programming. There are different models but here is a simple one (with a bit of an issue, but you can improve on this if necessary).
Split the problem into a master problem and sub problems, with the master problem looking like this:
minimize sum(p)
s.t.
for all i: sum[j] p[j]*count[j,i] >= n[i]
p[i] >= 0 (and integer, don't add this constraint)
Where:
p are the decision variables, deciding how many instances to use of a particular "packing" of the available items into the container. There are obviously way too many of these to list in advance, but they can be generated dynamically.
count[j,i] is the number of times that packing j contains item i.
n[i] is the number of times we want item i.
the constraints are >= because packing a couple extra items is OK and it lets us use fewer different packings (otherwise the master problem would need special "deliberately subobtimal" packings to be able to fulfill the constraint).
the integer constraint shouldn't be added explicitly if you're using a solver, because an integer solution may need columns that were not needed yet in the fractional solution.
Start with a couple of dumb packings for each item so that there definitely is some solution, bad as it may be. You can even just place one item in the container which is trivial to do even without using the solver for the sub problem, but the sub problem has to be solved anyway so you may as well reuse it here.
The sub problem is finding out what packing can be made that would improve the current solution that the master problem has. So take the dual costs of the rows of the master problem C (there are as many as there are different kinds of item) and solve
maximize y.C
s.t.
1) for all i: y[i] <= n[i]
2) for all i: y[i] = sum[j] P[j] if j is a placement of item i
3) for all cells (a,b): sum[j] P[j] (if j covers a,b) <= 1
4) for all existing packings e: e.y <= sum(e) - 1
y >= 0 and integer
P boolean
Where,
y are implied variables that follow from a choice for P, y[i] is how many times item i occurs in the packing.
P are the real decision variables, deciding whether or not to use a particular placement of a particular item. There are 62 different item-placements in your example problem, including rotations.
constraint 1 ensures that a packing can actually be used in an integer solution to the master problem (using too many of an item would doom the corresponding variable to be fractional or zero).
constraint 2 links y to P
constraint 3 ensures that the solution is a valid packing, in the sense that items do not overlap each other.
constraint 4 is necessary to avoid re-creating a column that was already added to the master problem.
Re-creating a column wouldn't happen if the master problem was a regular linear program, but it's an integer program and after branching constraint 4 needed to explicitly prevent re-creation. For example, on the "low" branch (recall this means we took some variable k that had a fractional value f and limited it to be <= ⌊f⌋), the first thing the sub problem tries to do is re-create exactly the same packing that corresponds k, so that it can be added to the master problem to "undo the damage". That is exactly the opposite of what we need though. So re-creating a column must be banned.
Constraint 4 is not a great way to do it, because now what the sub problem will try is generating all equivalent packings, thanks to symmetries. For example, after rounding down the variable of this packing:
It generates equivalent packings like these:
etc. There are a lot of these, and they're all pointless because it doesn't matter (for the objective value of the master problem, when the integer constraint is taken into account) where the 1x3 piece goes, it just matters that the packing contains a 1x3 piece and 14 1x1 pieces.
So ideally constraint 4 would be replaced by something more complicated that bans a packing equivalent to any that have come before, but something else that mostly works is first trying the high branch. At least in this example, that works out just fine.
In this example, after adding the columns that allow the master problem to be optimal (but still fractional, before any branching), the objective value is 5.5882352941176467. That already means that we know we'll need at least 6 containers, because this being the optimal fractional value proves that it cannot be done with 5 and a fractional number of containers is not an option.
A solution with 6 containers is found quickly, namely
Three of these:
One each of these:
Which packs all the pieces plus an extra 1x4 piece and 3 extra 1x1 pieces.
This algorithm does not depend the shape of the pieces or the container much, except that they have to be expressible as cells on a grid. The container can have holes all over the place, the pieces can be more like tetris pieces or even have disconnected parts. A downside is that the list of placements that it needs scales badly with the size of the container.
I am trying to create a grid with n separate labels, where each cell is labelled with one of the n labels such that all labels neighbour (edge-wise) all other labels somewhere in the grid (I don't care where). Labels are free to appear as many times as necessary, and I'd like the grid to be as small as possible. As an example, here's a grid for five labels, 1 to 5:
3 2 4
5 1 3
2 4 5
While generating this by hand is not too bad for small numbers of labels, it appears to be very hard to generate a grid of reasonable size for larger numbers and so I'm looking to write a program to generate them, without having to resort to a brute-force search. I imagine this must have been investigated before, but the closest I've found are De Bruijn tori, which are not quite what I'm looking for. Any help would be appreciated.
EDIT: Thanks to Benawii for the following improved description:
"Given an integer n, generate the smallest possible matrix where for every pair (x,y) where x≠y and x,y ∈ {1,...,n} there exists a pair of adjacent cells in the matrix whose values are x and y."
You can experiment with a simple greedy algorithm.
I don't think that I'm able to give you a strict mathematical prove, at least because the question is not strictly defined, but the algorithm is quite intuitive.
First, if you have 1...K numbers (K labels) then you need at least K*(K-1)/2 adjacent cells (connections) for full coverage. A matrix of size NxM generates (N-1)*M+(M-1)*N=2*N*M-(N+M) connections.
Since you didn't mention what you understand under 'smallest matrix', let's assume that you meant the area. In that case it is obvious that for the given area the square matrix will generate bigger number of connections because it has more 'inner' cells adjacent to 4 others. For example, for area 16 the matrix 4x4 is better than 2x8. 'Better' is intuitive - more connections and more chances to reach the goal. So lets use target square matrixes and expand them if needed. The above formula will become 2*N*(N-1).
Then we can experiment with the following greedy algorithm:
For input number K find the N such that 2*N*(N-1)>K*(K-1)/2. A simple school equation.
Keep an adjacency matrix M, set M[i][i]=1 for all i, and 0 for the rest of the pairs.
Initialize a resulting matrix R of size NxN, fill with 'empty value' markers, for example with -1.
Start from top-left corner and iterate right-down:
for (int i = 0; i < N; ++i)
for (int j = 0; j < N; ++j)
R[i][j];
for each such R[i][j] (which is -1 now) find such a value which will 'fit best'. Again, 'fit best' is an intuitive definition, here we understand such a value that will contribute to a new unused connection. For that reason create the set of already filled cell neighbor numbers - S, its size is 2 at most (upper and left neighbor). Then find first k such that M[x][k]=0 for both numbers x in S. If no such number then try at least one new connection, if no number even for one then both neighbors are completely covered, put some number from uncovered here - probably the one in 'worst situation' - such x where Sum(M[x][i]) is the smallest. You should also choose the one in 'worst situation' when there are several ones to choose from in any case.
After setting the value for R[i][j] don't forget to mark the new connections with numbers x from S - M[R[i][j]][x] = M[x][R[i][j]] = 1.
If the matrix is filled and there are still unmarked connections in M then append another row to the matrix and continue. If all the connections are found before the end then remove extra rows.
You can check this algorithm and see what will happen. Step 5 is the place for playing around, particularly in guessing which one to choose in equal situation (several numbers can be in equally 'worst situation').
Example:
for K=6 we need 15 connections:
N=4, we need 4x4 square matrix. The theory says that 4x3 matrix has 17 connections, so it can possibly fit, but we will try 4x4.
Here is the output of the algorithm above:
1234
5615
2413
36**
I'm not sure if you can do by 4x3, maybe yes... :)
I have been sitting on this for almost a week now. Here is the question in a PDF format.
I could only think of one idea so far but it failed. The idea was to recursively create all connected subgraphs which works in O(num_of_connected_subgraphs), but that is way too slow.
I would really appreciate someone giving my a direction. I'm inclined to think that the only way is dynamic programming but I can't seem to figure out how to do it.
OK, here is a conceptual description for the algorithm that I came up with:
Form an array of the (x,y) board map from -7 to 7 in both dimensions and place the opponents pieces on it.
Starting with the first row (lowest Y value, -N):
enumerate all possible combinations of the 2nd player's pieces on the row, eliminating only those that conflict with the opponents pieces.
for each combination on this row:
--group connected pieces into separate networks and number these
networks starting with 1, ascending
--encode the row as a vector using:
= 0 for any unoccupied or opponent position
= (1-8) for the network group that that piece/position is in.
--give each such grouping a COUNT of 1, and add it to a dictionary/hashset using the encoded vector as its key
Now, for each succeeding row, in ascending order {y=y+1}:
For every entry in the previous row's dictionary:
--If the entry has exactly 1 group, add it's COUNT to TOTAL
--enumerate all possible combinations of the 2nd player's pieces
on the current row, eliminating only those that conflict with the
opponents pieces. (change:) you should skip the initial combination
(where all entries are zero) for this step, as the step above actually
covers it. For each such combination on the current row:
+ produce a grouping vector as described above
+ compare the current row's group-vector to the previous row's
group-vector from the dictionary:
++ if there are any group-*numbers* from the previous row's
vector that are not adjacent to any gorups in the current
row's vector, *for at least one value of X*, then skip
to the next combination.
++ any groups for the current row that are adjacent to any
groups of the previous row, acquire the lowest such group
number
++ any groups for the current row that are not adjacent to
any groups of the previous row, are assigned an unused
group number
+ Re-Normalize the group-number assignments for the current-row's
combination (**) and encode the vector, giving it a COUNT equal
to the previous row-vector's COUNT
+ Add the current-row's vector to the dictionary for the current
Row, using its encoded vector as the key. If it already exists,
then add it's COUNT to the COUNT for the pre-exising entry
Finally, for every entry in the dictionary for the last row:
If the entry has exactly one group, then add it's COUNT to TOTAL
**: Re-Normalizing simply means to re-assign the group numbers so as to eliminate any permutations in the grouping pattern. Specifically, this means that new group numbers should be assigned in increasing order, from left-to-right, starting from one. So for example, if your grouping vector looked like this after grouping ot to the previous row:
2 0 5 5 0 3 0 5 0 7 ...
it should be re-mapped to this normal form:
1 0 2 2 0 3 0 2 0 4 ...
Note that as in this example, after the first row, the groupings can be discontiguous. This relationship must be preserved, so the two groups of "5"s are re-mapped to the same number ("2") in the re-normalization.
OK, a couple of notes:
A. I think that this approach is correct , but I I am really not certain, so it will definitely need some vetting, etc.
B. Although it is long, it's still pretty sketchy. Each individual step is non-trivial in itself.
C. Although there are plenty of individual optimization opportunities, the overall algorithm is still pretty complicated. It is a lot better than brute-force, but even so, my back-of-the-napkin estimate is still around (2.5 to 10)*10^11 operations for N=7.
So it's probably tractable, but still a long way off from doing 74 cases in 3 seconds. I haven't read all of the detail for Peter de Revaz's answer, but his idea of rotating the "diamond" might be workable for my algorithm. Although it would increase the complexity of the inner loop, it may drop the size of the dictionaries (and thus, the number of grouping-vectors to compare against) by as much as a 100x, though it's really hard to tell without actually trying it.
Note also that there isn't any dynamic programming here. I couldn't come up with an easy way to leverage it, so that might still be an avenue for improvement.
OK, I enumerated all possible valid grouping-vectors to get a better estimate of (C) above, which lowered it to O(3.5*10^9) for N=7. That's much better, but still about an order of magnitude over what you probably need to finish 74 tests in 3 seconds. That does depend on the tests though, if most of them are smaller than N=7, it might be able to make it.
Here is a rough sketch of an approach for this problem.
First note that the lattice points need |x|+|y| < N, which results in a diamond shape going from coordinates 0,6 to 6,0 i.e. with 7 points on each side.
If you imagine rotating this diamond by 45 degrees, you will end up with a 7*7 square lattice which may be easier to think about. (Although note that there are also intermediate 6 high columns.)
For example, for N=3 the original lattice points are:
..A..
.BCD.
EFGHI
.JKL.
..M..
Which rotate to
A D I
C H
B G L
F K
E J M
On the (possibly rotated) lattice I would attempt to solve by dynamic programming the problem of counting the number of ways of placing armies in the first x columns such that the last column is a certain string (plus a boolean flag to say whether some points have been placed yet).
The string contains a digit for each lattice point.
0 represents an empty location
1 represents an isolated point
2 represents the first of a new connected group
3 represents an intermediate in a connected group
4 represents the last in an connected group
During the algorithm the strings can represent shapes containing multiple connected groups, but we reject any transformations that leave an orphaned connected group.
When you have placed all columns you need to only count strings which have at most one connected group.
For example, the string for the first 5 columns of the shape below is:
....+ = 2
..+++ = 3
..+.. = 0
..+.+ = 1
..+.. = 0
..+++ = 3
..+++ = 4
The middle + is currently unconnected, but may become connected by a later column so still needs to be tracked. (In this diagram I am also assuming a up/down/left/right 4-connectivity. The rotated lattice should really use a diagonal connectivity but I find that a bit harder to visualise and I am not entirely sure it is still a valid approach with this connectivity.)
I appreciate that this answer is not complete (and could do with lots more pictures/explanation), but perhaps it will prompt someone else to provide a more complete solution.
Lets say I have a parabola. Now I also have a bunch of sticks that are all of the same width (yes my drawing skills are amazing!). How can I stack these sticks within the parabola such that I am minimizing the space it uses as much as possible? I believe that this falls under the category of Knapsack problems, but this Wikipedia page doesn't appear to bring me closer to a real world solution. Is this a NP-Hard problem?
In this problem we are trying to minimize the amount of area consumed (eg: Integral), which includes vertical area.
I cooked up a solution in JavaScript using processing.js and HTML5 canvas.
This project should be a good starting point if you want to create your own solution. I added two algorithms. One that sorts the input blocks from largest to smallest and another that shuffles the list randomly. Each item is then attempted to be placed in the bucket starting from the bottom (smallest bucket) and moving up until it has enough space to fit.
Depending on the type of input the sort algorithm can give good results in O(n^2). Here's an example of the sorted output.
Here's the insert in order algorithm.
function solve(buckets, input) {
var buckets_length = buckets.length,
results = [];
for (var b = 0; b < buckets_length; b++) {
results[b] = [];
}
input.sort(function(a, b) {return b - a});
input.forEach(function(blockSize) {
var b = buckets_length - 1;
while (b > 0) {
if (blockSize <= buckets[b]) {
results[b].push(blockSize);
buckets[b] -= blockSize;
break;
}
b--;
}
});
return results;
}
Project on github - https://github.com/gradbot/Parabolic-Knapsack
It's a public repo so feel free to branch and add other algorithms. I'll probably add more in the future as it's an interesting problem.
Simplifying
First I want to simplify the problem, to do that:
I switch the axes and add them to each other, this results in x2 growth
I assume it is parabola on a closed interval [a, b], where a = 0 and for this example b = 3
Lets say you are given b (second part of interval) and w (width of a segment), then you can find total number of segments by n=Floor[b/w]. In this case there exists a trivial case to maximize Riemann sum and function to get i'th segment height is: f(b-(b*i)/(n+1))). Actually it is an assumption and I'm not 100% sure.
Max'ed example for 17 segments on closed interval [0, 3] for function Sqrt[x] real values:
And the segment heights function in this case is Re[Sqrt[3-3*Range[1,17]/18]], and values are:
Exact form:
{Sqrt[17/6], 2 Sqrt[2/3], Sqrt[5/2],
Sqrt[7/3], Sqrt[13/6], Sqrt[2],
Sqrt[11/6], Sqrt[5/3], Sqrt[3/2],
2/Sqrt[3], Sqrt[7/6], 1, Sqrt[5/6],
Sqrt[2/3], 1/Sqrt[2], 1/Sqrt[3],
1/Sqrt[6]}
Approximated form:
{1.6832508230603465,
1.632993161855452, 1.5811388300841898, 1.5275252316519468, 1.4719601443879744, 1.4142135623730951, 1.35400640077266, 1.2909944487358056, 1.224744871391589, 1.1547005383792517, 1.0801234497346435, 1, 0.9128709291752769, 0.816496580927726, 0.7071067811865475, 0.5773502691896258, 0.4082482904638631}
What you have archived is a Bin-Packing problem, with partially filled bin.
Finding b
If b is unknown or our task is to find smallest possible b under what all sticks form the initial bunch fit. Then we can limit at least b values to:
lower limit : if sum of segment heights = sum of stick heights
upper limit : number of segments = number of sticks longest stick < longest segment height
One of the simplest way to find b is to take a pivot at (higher limit-lower limit)/2 find if solution exists. Then it becomes new higher or lower limit and you repeat the process until required precision is met.
When you are looking for b you do not need exact result, but suboptimal and it would be much faster if you use efficient algorithm to find relatively close pivot point to actual b.
For example:
sort the stick by length: largest to smallest
start 'putting largest items' into first bin thy fit
This is equivalent to having multiple knapsacks (assuming these blocks are the same 'height', this means there's one knapsack for each 'line'), and is thus an instance of the bin packing problem.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_packing
How can I stack these sticks within the parabola such that I am minimizing the (vertical) space it uses as much as possible?
Just deal with it like any other Bin Packing problem. I'd throw meta-heuristics on it (such as tabu search, simulated annealing, ...) since those algorithms aren't problem specific.
For example, if I'd start from my Cloud Balance problem (= a form of Bin Packing) in Drools Planner. If all the sticks have the same height and there's no vertical space between 2 sticks on top of each other, there's not much I'd have to change:
Rename Computer to ParabolicRow. Remove it's properties (cpu, memory, bandwith). Give it a unique level (where 0 is the lowest row). Create a number of ParabolicRows.
Rename Process to Stick
Rename ProcessAssignement to StickAssignment
Rewrite the hard constraints so it checks if there's enough room for the sum of all Sticks assigned to a ParabolicRow.
Rewrite the soft constraints to minimize the highest level of all ParabolicRows.
I'm very sure it is equivalent to bin-packing:
informal reduction
Be x the width of the widest row, make the bins 2x big and create for every row a placeholder element which is 2x-rowWidth big. So two placeholder elements cannot be packed into one bin.
To reduce bin-packing on parabolic knapsack you just create placeholder elements for all rows that are bigger than the needed binsize with size width-binsize. Furthermore add placeholders for all rows that are smaller than binsize which fill the whole row.
This would obviously mean your problem is NP-hard.
For other ideas look here maybe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutting_stock_problem
Most likely this is the 1-0 Knapsack or a bin-packing problem. This is a NP hard problem and most likely this problem I don't understand and I can't explain to you but you can optimize with greedy algorithms. Here is a useful article about it http://www.developerfusion.com/article/5540/bin-packing that I use to make my php class bin-packing at phpclasses.org.
Props to those who mentioned the fact that the levels could be at varying heights (ex: assuming the sticks are 1 'thick' level 1 goes from 0.1 unit to 1.1 units, or it could go from 0.2 to 1.2 units instead)
You could of course expand the "multiple bin packing" methodology and test arbitrarily small increments. (Ex: run the multiple binpacking methodology with levels starting at 0.0, 0.1, 0.2, ... 0.9) and then choose the best result, but it seems like you would get stuck calulating for an infinite amount of time unless you had some methodlogy to verify that you had gotten it 'right' (or more precisely, that you had all the 'rows' correct as to what they contained, at which point you could shift them down until they met the edge of the parabola)
Also, the OP did not specify that the sticks had to be laid horizontally - although perhaps the OP implied it with those sweet drawings.
I have no idea how to optimally solve such an issue, but i bet there are certain cases where you could randomly place sticks and then test if they are 'inside' the parabola, and it would beat out any of the methodologies relying only on horizontal rows.
(Consider the case of a narrow parabola that we are trying to fill with 1 long stick.)
I say just throw them all in there and shake them ;)