2D Arrangment/Optimization Problem

Question

Okay,

I have a list of angles, call it A. How would I arrange them in a 2D m-by-n grid G such that the distances between each adjacent angle-element (row- and column-wise) is minimized?

G has as many elements as A, or more. I get to pick m and n. Duplicating elements from A is allowed, but every element from A must be used at least once.

Toy Example 1:

A = {0, 10, 10, 20, 20, 20, 20, 30, 30}

Put them in a 3x3 array:

G = {
 {0,  10,  20},
 {10. 20,  30},
 {20, 30,  20}
}

Toy Example 2 (list of 5 angles, put them in a 3x2 grid, so have to duplicate 1 element):

A = {0, 350, 10, 20, 30}

G = {
 {0,   10, 20},
 {350,  0, 30}
}

Hopefully that was clear enough? Let me know if it wasn't....

Answer 1

This seems to work:

A = Sort@{10, 0, 10, 20, 20, 20, 20, 30, 30};

per = Permutations[A];

tot = Total /@ Abs[Differences /@ per];

pos = First@Flatten@Position[tot, Length@A*10 - 10];

(for other spacings replace 10 by f.e. 5).

Partition[per[[pos]], 3]

{{0, 10, 20}, {10, 20, 30}, {20, 30, 20}}

For odd A:

B = Prepend[A, Min@A];

and repeat the above steps.