Traveling salesperson problem

Shayan Oveis Gharan has won the Abacus Medal for using tools from across mathematics to boost the power of algorithms.

Integer linear programming can help find the answer to a variety of real-world problems. Now researchers have found a much faster way to do it.

To understand what quantum computers can do — and what they can’t — avoid falling for overly simple explanations.

After 44 years, there’s finally a better way to find approximate solutions to the notoriously difficult traveling salesperson problem.

A new proof from the Australian science fiction writer Greg Egan and a 2011 proof anonymously posted online are now being hailed as significant advances on a puzzle mathematicians have been studying for at least 25 years.

The real-world version of the famous “traveling salesman problem” finally gets a good-enough solution.

Three computer scientists have solved a problem central to a dozen far-flung mathematical fields.

An infinitesimal advance in the traveling salesman problem breathes new life into the search for improved approximate solutions.