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 ...

Many important and valuable planning and scheduling problems in logistics and automation are combinatorial optimization problems. The most famous problem of this type is the traveling salesman problem ...

Tackling the traveling salesman problem with chemotaxis is a nice example of when the suboptimal is optimal, says Bartumeus. Of course, with all the information, time and resources in the world, ...

An optimization problem is one where you have to make the best decision (choose the best investments, minimize your company’s costs, find the class schedule with the fewest morning classes, or so on).

Dr. James McCaffrey of Microsoft Research uses full code samples to detail an evolutionary algorithm technique that apparently hasn't been published before. The goal of a combinatorial optimization ...