[Haskell-cafe] looking for a good algorithm

[Casey Hawthorne]

Sorry, I forgot to ask an important question.

Is the table stored 
in a dense format as in complete rows and complete columns
or
in a sparse table format?


>The question is more about algorithm than Haskell. But I am going to code in Haskell which I am still learning. 

>Suppose I have a large table, with hundreds of columns and thousands of rows. But not every cell has a value (of String, or Int, or Double type). 

>I want to shuffle the rows to maximize the number of columns whose first 100 rows have at least one number, given a list of preferred column names since there is no guarantee that every number column will have at least one number in its first 100 rows after shuffling. 

>Can someone provide a good algorithm for this problem? (I do not have any background in algorithms.) You can assume I already know which columns are of Int or Double type. 

--
Regards,
Casey