Current Events > A question about cycles of combinations

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I have a group of 8 people who I want to arrange into 2 groups of 4 over the course of 40 or so instances of the same activity. I want a cycle I can run through that, over an arbitrarily long number of instances, will end up with every person being grouped with every other person roughly evenly i.e. 1234 5678, 1357 2468, 1278 3456, 1256 3478, etc. I'd also like to minimize the length of this cycle if possible. What is the optimal cycle?

Well 8*7*6*5/4*3*2*1

Once you choose the first group the second group is chosen.

So ways to chose the first group divided by how many ways that group will be listed

7*2*5

CobraGT posted...

Well 8*7*6*5/4*3*2*1

Once you choose the first group the second group is chosen.

So ways to chose the first group divided by how many ways that group will be listed

7*2*5

Yes, I know about the actual number of combinations, but I'm trying to optimize these combinations to make the cycle as short as possible.

Isn't this just simple round-robin pairng?