A team consists of 1x QB, 2x RB, 3x WR, 1x TE, 1x K, 1x D

With total options of:
QB: 39
RB: 118
WR: 147
TE: 86
PK: 32
Def: 32

You are looking at a total possible combinations of C(39,1)*C(118,2)*C(147,3)*C(86,1)*C(32,1)*C(32,1)
which comes out to 12,296,678,846,699,520 (12.2 quadrillion)

brute forcing that would take forever.

This post was edited by spt_94 on Mar 16 2016 10:10am

Perhaps not; it depends on the details of how fantasy football works. Is there a synergy between player of some kind?

For example If you pick QB Smith, and WR Jones; then in real football Smith makes a touchdown by passing to Jones. Do you get more points than:the points for just having Smith + the points for just having Jones?

If not you can consider them independently.

I guess another way of asking the same problem is: is the score of a fantasy football team more than just the sum of its parts?

It is just the sum of its parts.

but you can't just take the highest possible sum because there is a salary cap that you cannot exceed.

A team's salary cannot exceed $60,000.

Each player on the team has a salary, so if you pick a QB that costs $9,000 then you only have $51,000 left to spend on the rest of the team which is 8 players.

So I am trying to find the best possible team without exceeding the salary cap. I was going to use a genetic algorithm for this because that is what was suggested to me by my professor, but really any process that I can make parallel will be fine.

The class I am in is for parallelism so my project must use some sort of parallelism, but doesn't necessarily need to use a genetic algorithm.

ok yeah, see i don't know shit about fantasy football, heh

Yeah so what I was doing right now is calculating the Team's fitness score which was just their total points and if their salary exceeds $60,000 then I just make their fitness score 0 because you can't use that team.

I doubt this is the right way to do it, but even after I determine all the team's fitness scores, I don't know how to proceed in evolving my teams.

Well this salary business might give a random walk a nice starting point anyway. Have you considered figuring out which player in each positions provided the most 'bang for buck' last season (the highest points/dollars statistic)? Might be a good starting team. It is an interesting project!

Do you think you could link an exact set of rules that you will be using for the fantasy football so I can ream em? thanks

like the rules for a team?

You just have to build a complete team meaning:
1x QB
2x RB
3x WR
1x TE
1x K
1x D

without exceeding the $60,000 salary cap.

Yeah the Player class that I have created has a fantasy_points/$ ratio.