A statistical approach to the traveling salesman problem

W. J. Kovacs and D. T. Goodin

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 1985, vol. 19, issue 3, 239-252

Abstract: A statistical approach is shown to be adaptable to the N-city traveling salesman problem by considering route distances to be random variables which are continuous and normally distributed. A solution to the shortest route distance and path can be approximated by utilizing a Monte Carlo simulation to obtain a representative sample of possible journeys. The approach involves recursive statistical inference which is used to select next-city visits leading to the most probable minimum route path. A statistical selection of the minimum route path is computationally efficient and computer run time increases in proportion to the square of the number of cities as opposed to an (N - 1)! increase for a deterministic approach. The accuracy of the statistical approach is directly proportional to the number of Monte Carlo simulations.

Date: 1985
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0191-2615(85)90007-4
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:transb:v:19:y:1985:i:3:p:239-252

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Transportation Research Part B: Methodological is currently edited by Fred Mannering

More articles in Transportation Research Part B: Methodological from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().