INTRODUCTION
The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is one which has commanded much attention of mathematicians and computer scientists specifically because it is so easy to describe and so difficult to solve. The problem can simply be stated as: if a traveling salesman wishes to visit exactly once each of a list of m cities (where the cost of traveling from city i tocity j is c ij) and then return to the home city what is the least costly route the traveling salesman can take? A complete historical development of this and related problems can be found in Hoffman and Wolfe (1985).
The importance of the TSP is that it is representative of a larger class of problems known as combinatorial optimization problems. The TSP problem belongs in the class of combinatorial optimization problems known as NP-complete. Specifically, if one can find an efficient (i.e., polynomial-time) algorithm for the traveling salesman problem, then efficient algorithms could be found for all other problems in the...
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Hoffman, K.L., Padberg, M. (2001). Traveling salesman problem . In: Gass, S.I., Harris, C.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Operations Research and Management Science. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-0611-X_1068
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