The goal of a combinatorial optimization problem is to find a set of distinct integer values that minimizes some cost function. The most famous example is the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP). There ...

Dr. James McCaffrey of Microsoft Research shows how to implement simulated annealing for the Traveling Salesman Problem (find the best ordering of a set of discrete items). The goal of a combinatorial ...

Not long ago, a team of researchers from Stanford and McGill universities broke a 35-year record in computer science by an almost imperceptible margin — four hundredths of a trillionth of a trillionth ...

The traveling salesman problem falls in that field, and it remains a puzzler. “It’s one of the most famous problems known as NP-Complete,” Palmer said from his office at the University of Montana.

One small amoeba found a solution to the traveling salesman problem faster than our best algorithms. What does it know that we don't? One of the oldest problems in computer science was just solved by ...