02481cam a22002414a 4500 110826s2012 njuab b 001 0 eng 9780691152707 0691152705 SDU QA164 C771 I 2012 Cook, William, 192981 In pursuit of the traveling salesman : mathematics at the limits of computation / William J. Cook. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 2012. 228 p. : ill. HKBU library YT2025 M10 "What is the shortest possible route for a traveling salesman seeking to visit each city on a list exactly once and return to his city of origin? It sounds simple enough, yet the traveling salesman problem is one of the most intensely studied puzzles in applied mathematics--and it has defied solution to this day. In this book, William Cook takes readers on a mathematical excursion, picking up the salesman's trail in the 1800s when Irish mathematician W. R. Hamilton first defined the problem, and venturing to the furthest limits of today's state-of-the-art attempts to solve it. Cook examines the origins and history of the salesman problem and explores its many important applications, from genome sequencing and designing computer processors to arranging music and hunting for planets. He looks at how computers stack up against the traveling salesman problem on a grand scale, and discusses how humans, unaided by computers, go about trying to solve the puzzle. Cook traces the salesman problem to the realms of neuroscience, psychology, and art, and he also challenges readers to tackle the problem themselves. The traveling salesman problem is--literally--a $1 million question. That's the prize the Clay Mathematics Institute is offering to anyone who can solve the problem or prove that it can't be done. In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman travels to the very threshold of our understanding about the nature of complexity, and challenges you yourself to discover the solution to this captivating mathematical problem"--Provided by publisher. "In Pursuit of the Traveling Salesman covers the history, applications, theory, and computation of the traveling salesman problem right up to state-of-the-art solution machinery"--Provided by publisher. Traveling salesman problem. 192982 Computational complexity. 179563 = C.1 SDU GBE lcc 103907 103907 0 0 lcc 0 QA0164 C771 I2012 0 CGB 284784 SDU SDU GEN3 2025-10-16 2 0 QA164 C771 I 2012 1000385137 2025-10-16 00:00:00 C.1 2025-10-16 GBE