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If there are only a few cities to consider, the problem is easy. But as the number of cities increases, the number of possible routes increases dramatically. Even the fastest computer cannot evaluate each of these routes individually.
The TSP and its ancestors have fascinated mathematicians for more than a century because the TSP is a problem that is easy to state but extraordinarily difficult to solve optimally.
Project Earned Awards
Nearly four years ago, Jim started work on the TSP by asking some RCHS students to find the shortest route by connecting dots, representing cities, on paper. He then wrote a computer program to predict their performance.
His work started him winning science fair prizes as a ninth-grader, taking him from first place in his local science, fair, to the regional, the state and, finally, the international level at Biloxi, Mississippi.
Last year Jim developed new computer methods of solving the TSP. His methods outperform those developed by other researchers, a feat which won him three first-place awards at last year’s International Science and Engineering Fair in Ontario, Canada, along with $12,000 in scholarships, and made him a front runner among the thousands of Westinghouse contestants.
In practical terms, Jim’s program could be adapted to, for instance, help the U.S. military cut the time and
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