3 ms·
I'm quite convinced that if you had a 1% better solution to the salesman problem than what fedex or ups currently have, they'll pay good money, though :)
by baq 3y ago
I'm quite convinced that if you had a 1% better solution to the salesman problem than what fedex or ups currently have, they'll pay good money, though :)
- adwn 3y agoThe problem is that in practice, you don't have complete information, and the information you have is slightly incorrect. You also don't have a complete model, and the model you have is slightly incorrect.
- theamk 3y agoI would not be so sure. What's the point of the theoretically perfect solution when the travel times are so unpredictable? The truck stops are 3-5 minutes apart on average (according to random reddit comment [0]), 1% of that is 3 seconds. Meanwhile a single missed light (say because some other vehicle was driving slow or UPS driver was guided into non-familiar route) can add more than a minute. So something like a better way to arrange packages in truck, or better traffic preidiction model, would be much more useful than any TSP improvements. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/UPS/comments/89zw0h/how_long_does_out_for_delivery_take/dwvw0c5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UPS/comments/89zw0h/how_long_does_o...
- ilyagr 3y agoNo individual truck would notice the difference. But averaged over many trucks and many days, it should result in a measurable change in gas spending.
- travisjungroth 3y agoThrow on a few more decimal places if you like. The point is that in the physical world, “best” isn’t usually categorically different from “extremely close to best with high probability”.