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TravellingsalesmanproblemWikipedia,thefreeencyclopedia

Travellingsalesmanproblem
FromWikipedia,thefreeencyclopedia

Thetravellingsalesmanproblem(TSP)asksthefollowingquestion:Givenalistofcitiesandthedistancesbetweeneachpairofcities,whatisthe
shortestpossibleroutethatvisitseachcityexactlyonceandreturnstotheorigincity?ItisanNPhardproblemincombinatorialoptimization,important
inoperationsresearchandtheoreticalcomputerscience.
TSPisaspecialcaseofthetravellingpurchaserproblem.
Inthetheoryofcomputationalcomplexity,thedecisionversionoftheTSP(where,givenalengthL,thetaskisto
decidewhetherthegraphhasanytourshorterthanL)belongstotheclassofNPcompleteproblems.Thus,itis
possiblethattheworstcaserunningtimeforanyalgorithmfortheTSPincreasessuperpolynomially(perhaps,
specifically,exponentially)withthenumberofcities.
Theproblemwasfirstformulatedin1930andisoneofthemostintensivelystudiedproblemsinoptimization.It
isusedasabenchmarkformanyoptimizationmethods.Eventhoughtheproblemiscomputationallydifficult,a
largenumberofheuristicsandexactmethodsareknown,sothatsomeinstanceswithtensofthousandsofcities
canbesolvedcompletelyandevenproblemswithmillionsofcitiescanbeapproximatedwithinasmallfraction
of1%.[1]
Solutionofatravellingsalesman
TheTSPhasseveralapplicationseveninitspurestformulation,suchasplanning,logistics,andthemanufacture
problem
ofmicrochips.Slightlymodified,itappearsasasubprobleminmanyareas,suchasDNAsequencing.Inthese
applications,theconceptcityrepresents,forexample,customers,solderingpoints,orDNAfragments,andthe
conceptdistancerepresentstravellingtimesorcost,orasimilaritymeasurebetweenDNAfragments.TheTSPalsoappearsinastronomy,as
astronomersobservingmanysourceswillwanttominimisethetimespentslewingthetelescopebetweenthesources.Inmanyapplications,additional
constraintssuchaslimitedresourcesortimewindowsmaybeimposed.

Contents
1History
2Description
2.1Asagraphproblem
2.2Asymmetricandsymmetric
2.3Relatedproblems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelling_salesman_problem

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