title: Optimizing People Placement - Large Data Set
body: <p>I'm trying to figure out the best method / program to handle this computation to get the most people happy, ie the highest value for each person while still having all values be almost equal.  </p>
  
  <p>There are 24 people, 100 days and 4 people need to be selected for each day. All days must be full, ie the 24 people must be spread over 400 the slots with each person getting about 8 slots.<br>
  How can I create a program / algorithm that will allow the people to rank all 100 days in order of preference as well as the top 5 people they would prefer to be selected with.  I was thinking that each day and each of the preferred people would get some sort of point value.  Then the algorithm would run through the data set and find the combination that would yield the highest amount of people the happiest while still making everyone roughly even.  </p>
  
  <p>Is this easily possible using something like excel?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks  </p>