{"id":311,"date":"2014-10-09T11:31:54","date_gmt":"2014-10-09T11:31:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dave0.nfshost.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2014\/10\/09\/if-you-dug-the-math-of-the-traveling-salesman-solution-youll-dig-this-scifi-ccfinlay\/"},"modified":"2014-10-09T11:31:54","modified_gmt":"2014-10-09T11:31:54","slug":"if-you-dug-the-math-of-the-traveling-salesman-solution-youll-dig-this-scifi-ccfinlay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2014\/10\/if-you-dug-the-math-of-the-traveling-salesman-solution-youll-dig-this-scifi-ccfinlay\/","title":{"rendered":"If You Dug the Math of “The Traveling Salesman Solution,” You’ll Dig This ( #scifi @ccfinlay )"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past summer The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction<\/i> published my novelette “The Traveling Salesman Solution<\/a>–which has generally been lauded for getting some hard math right[*] in the service of posing a totally non-mathematical ethical dilemma.
\n
\nIf you’re the sort of reader who dug that story–or would dig such a story–for the math, then you are gonna *love* this: A guy named Todd W. Schneider<\/a> has put together a neat littler interactive web-app for solving instances of the Traveling Salesman Problem using simulated annealing.
\nThe Traveling Salesman with Simulated Annealing, R, and Shiny – Todd W. Schneider<\/a>
\nFor folks who’ve read the story, you may wonder: Is this Todd guy gonna build a doomsday device now (’cause, naturally, that’s what you do with computer hardware\/software that solves the TSP). The answer is, “No,” because his program doesn’t *solve* the TSP, per se. The neat thing about simulated annealing is that it’s a short cut for finding *good* solutions, not *optimum*, solutions. You save time by settling for something less than perfect (which, itself, is sort of a tidy lesson in trade-offs, ethical and otherwise). Very neat, but not the world-shaking all-purpose always-optimal TSP-solver that poor old Bryce built in the story.
\nFor more abut the story, you can check out this interview<\/a>. Sadly, it’s not available as an ebook yet (I’ve been busy), but you can order the print back issue<\/a> directly from F&SF<\/i>, or contact me<\/a> directly and I’ll see if I can hook you up with a PDF or something.
\n(I got wind of Todd W. Schneider’s simulated annealing TSP web app via The Atlantic’s City Lab<\/a>)<\/p>\n


\n[*] IRONY ALERT<\/small>: As one very astute reviewer pointed out<\/a> I got the hard math right, and then screwed up the simple act of transcribing it–which basically sums up why I repeated algebra and barely passed pre-calc. *sighs*<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past summer The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction published my novelette “The Traveling Salesman Solution–which has generally been lauded for getting some hard math right[*] in the service of posing a totally non-mathematical ethical dilemma. If you’re the sort of reader who dug that story–or would dig such a story–for the math, then … Continue reading “If You Dug the Math of “The Traveling Salesman Solution,” You’ll Dig This ( #scifi @ccfinlay )”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}