I was trying to find out WHEN I was researching COMBINATION weighers; apparently I didn’t write about it TOO much on Facebook but I did find this in a comment on the original post here in 2016; so it _was_ some time ago. staying even-handed with many possibilities at once..
“I once researched combination weighers to see a practical application of this combinational problem. It’s sort of a “fairness” problem. How can you make thing fair for all so that their “orbits are smooth”?
I looked at patents for some old combnation weighers… and I was amazed and the cleverness and complexity of the task of, say, making a machine that you could dump peanuts into and it would fill 1 oz of peanuts into 7 bags at the same time. It’s complicated to get it right.
So, it’s been a subject of on and off fascination for a long time.”