travelling salesman
Noun
Meaning
travelling salesman (plural travelling salesmen)
A man who travels, often within a certain territory, soliciting orders or selling goods.
Synonyms
Hypernyms
Examples
I am a travelling salesman. I deal in ideas.
It was first considered mathematically in the 1930s by Merrill Flood who was looking to solve a school bus routing problem. citation Hassler Whitney at Princeton University introduced the name travelling salesman problem soon after.
Shen Lin and Brian Kernighan first published their method in 1972, and it was the most reliable heuristic for solving travelling salesman problems for nearly two decades.
Complexity of approximation In the general case, finding a shortest travelling salesman tour is NPO -complete.
His father was a travelling salesman for Folgers before becoming a carpenter.
In May 2004, the travelling salesman problem of visiting all 24,978 towns in Sweden was solved: a tour of length approximately 72,500 kilometres was found and it was proven that no shorter tour exists.