Optimal information organization for web and other displays

We usually look at information and assimilate them in small chunks in a time-wise linear fashion. Processing an information chunk x
_j
has two parts: (1) looking at x
_j
, and (2) recalling zero or more pre viously seen chunks x
_i
that have direct semantic relationship with x
_j
in order to properly assimilate x
_j
. Since a larger gap between the presentations of x
_i
and x
_j
means a larger effort in recalling x
_i
at x
_j
, the total recall effort R(x
_j
) at x
_j
depends on the order of presentation of x
_i
's, but it does not affect the other effort of looking at x
_j
's. We present an O(n
²
) algorithm to minimize ΣR(x
_j
) for a given collection of information chunks {x
_j
; 1 ≤ j ≤ n}, where the weights s(x
_i
, x
_j
) ≥ 0 represent the strength of the semantic dependency of x
_j
on x
_i
and the weights w(x
_i
) >; 0 represent the gap due to x
_i
.