Re: Special query type for Spatial DB

Thanks Paul.

"Paul" <paul_at_not.a.chance.ie> wrote in message news:MPG.1a722089f01e8bc79898a1_at_news1.eircom.net...
>
> hobbit_at_southern_seaweed.com.op says...
>
> > WTF is the travelling salesman problem?
>
>
> Google is your friend. 1st site.
>
> -----------
> The traveling salesman problem, or TSP for short, is this: given a
> finite number of "cities" along with the cost of travel between each
> pair of them, find the cheapest way of visiting all the cities and
> returning to your starting point. In these pages we report on our
> ongoing project to solve large-scale instances of the TSP.
> -------------

> The "problem" is that there is (as yet) no formula for solving this
> problem - you have to test all possible combinations. There are
> mathematical techniques for dealing with this problem, but the
> "problem" for the maths heads is that no solution that they can produce
> is *_proveably_* correct.

This sounds like it is tending towards developing a reputation similar to, for example, the "Three Body Problem" of celestial (gravitational) dynamics.

Apparently the king of Sweden in 1900 offered a prize to the best solution offered to this problem. This was won by Poincare who essentially showed the problem was not able to be solved.

Pete Brown
Falls Creek
Oz Received on Sun Jan 18 2004 - 13:16:41 CET