The Traveling Salesman Problem

Provides an in-depth treatment of the Traveling Salesman problem--the archetypical problem in combinatorial optimization. Each chapter deals with a different aspect of the problem, and has been written by an acknowledged expert in the field. Focusses on the essential ideas in a self-contained manner. Includes exercises and an extensive bibliography.

History (A. Hoffman and P. Wolfe). Motivation and Modeling (R. Garfinkel). Computational Complexity (D. Johnson and C. Papadimitriou). Well-Solved Special Cases (P. Gilmore, et al.). Performance Guarantees for Heuristics (D. Johnson and C.Papadimitriou). Probabilistic Analysis of Heuristics (R. Karp and J. Steele). Empirical Analysis of Heuristics (B. Golden and W. Stewart). Polyhedral Theory (M. Grotschel and M. Padberg). Polyhedral Algorithms (M. Padberg and M. Grotschel). Branch and Bound Methods (E. Balas and P. Toth). Hamiltonian Cycles (V. Chvatal). Vehicle Routing (N. Christofides). Bibliography.