Ever needed to divide a small number of items of different value (e.g. pieces of fruit of random weight) into two sets, as evenly as possible? In the case of 3 items, the answer is, of course, always to divide as “biggest vs. other two”.
Here is a small tool to take the guesswork, or tedious comparison of the various combinations, out of the situation for 4 or 5.
Enter values:
A
B
C
D
E
I hope to be able to later make a version to deal cleanly with up to e.g. 10 items if/when I work out how to automate the generation and display of combinations. (Of course, as the number of items becomes large, simple ‘bulk’ manipulations like balancing scales or weighing the group and removing roughly half, become more sensible!). Update, Autumn 2015: I've made Java versions that replicate this, and also extend to 11 (quite reliably) and unlimited input (less reliably) by random sampling; I may make JavaScript equivalents for upload here and/or try to get the Java program into a web interface.