Comparing Algorithms for the Traveling Salesman Problem
Comparing Algorithms for the Traveling Salesman Problem
The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is an NP-complete problem. Different approximation algorithms have their advantages and disadvantages.
Mathematica's function FindShortestTour offers a choice of four methods ("OrZweig", "OrOpt", "TwoOpt", "CCA"), which may yield identical results.
This Demonstration provides another TSP algorithm called 3-Opt. Experiments show that the 3-Opt algorithm sometimes finds a better result than any of the four kinds of Mathematica FindShortestTour methods.