Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP)

Traveling Salesperson Problem: Historical Vignette

On July 26, 1954, Newsweek reported that three researchers had solved a long-standing challenge of finding a
shortest possible route through cities in each of the 48 states, plus Washington, D.C. Note that back in 1954,
there were only 48 states!

The stunning feature of this work was that the researchers constructed a precise mathematical argument that
their tour was shortest possible. That is, they knew for certain that no route through the cities was better than the
one they had constructed using the driving distance information they had (taken from a Rand McNally atlas)!
They proved they had an ​optimal​ tour.

Their technical paper on the topic appeared in the journal ​Operations Research​ in November of that year.
The technique they crafted to attack the problem continues today to be a focal point of the research and practice
of the applied mathematics and engineering fields called ​operations research​ and ​mathematical optimization​.

Found at: ​http://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/tsp/usa50/index.html

Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP): ​The idea behind TSP is a traveling salesperson wishes to visit a number
of cities (greater than 2) and return to the starting point in such a way that each city is visited exactly once and
the total distance covered is a short as possible (or the total cost is minimized). TSP defines the best route as
the shortest route, that is the route that covers the least amount of distance or where the cost is minimized.

Below are two types of Traveling Salesperson Problems. For each question try solving them using the
algorithms below for (a) and (b) as well as answering question (c).

a) Use the Nearest Neighbor Greedy Algorithm (Also called: The Nearest Neighbor Algorithm)
b) Use the Cheapest Link Greedy Algorithm (Also called: The Shortest Edge Algorithm)
c) Were your solutions to (a) and (b) the same? Why or why not?

Examples:
1. Through a crazy series of events the Doctor’s spaceship broke into four pieces across England. Lucky
the Doctor landed in London along with the biggest piece of their spaceship. The United Nations
Intelligence Taskforce (UNIT) was able to locate the other 3 missing pieces in the 3 cities below and
agreed to house the Doctor’s spaceship until they had collected the rest of their ship. Being a Timelord,
the Doctor wants to collect their pieces as quickly as possible. Given the time it takes to go from one
city to the next (in minutes), find the path that will be the shortest time possible.
2. You and your friends (your party) are about to embark on a Dungeon & Dragons (D&D) camgian to find
the “legendary stones of 4” to return back to the North. Your Dungeon Master (DM) has you starting in
the North and explains that the 4 stones are in each of the 4 other cities on the map below. The edges
tell how many days, on foot, it takes to get from one city to the next. Since your party wants to finish
the campaign as soon as possible, find the path that will be the shortest time possible for your party to
collect all 4 stones and return back to the North.