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From: timin@netcom.com (Mitchell E. Timin)
Subject: TSP COMPETITION RESULTS
Message-ID: <timinCyIDJx.HL3@netcom.com>
Summary: first announcement of the results of the TSP contest
Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest)
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 1994 23:07:09 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu sci.op-research:2055 sci.math:84678 comp.ai:24896 comp.ai.genetic:4124


                    Results of the TSP Competition

First Place in this Competition goes to Jukka Honkanen of Finland!

This announcement concerns the TSP contest which was announced this
past spring and summer.  (For the curious reader who is not familiar
with this contest, e-mail to timin@netcom.com.)  A much more detailed
write-up will be posted within a week; this one is just to get the 
main results out quickly.

Second Place goes to Frank Sven Nestel of Germany.

Third Place is for Randy Saint of Texas, U.S.A.

There was a three-way tie for fourth place between:
     Chad Hurwitz
     Juergen Klose
     The Koeln group

The above persons will receive a total of $1000 retail value of
software. (Street Wizard mapping software by Adept Computer Solutions) 

A total of thirteen testable programs were received.  The programs were
each tested with three sets of data, for 47, 110 and 111 points. 
They were each run several times to find out if their results were
randomly variable.  Only one such program was found and it was not
one of the best performers.  All of the other programs were
deterministic, giving the same route and execution time for every
run.  Timing was done with a stop watch, manually.  The same computer
was used for all runs; it is a 486DX66.

As an example of the performance of the better programs, Mr.
Honkanen's program required only 20.3 seconds to find a route with
111 points, and the cost of that route was less than two percent
greater than the lowest cost found by any program.  The lowest cost
was found by Mr. Klose's program in 83.3 seconds.  Mr. Klose's
program also found the lowest cost for the 110 point problem, using
89.5 seconds to do that.  Mr. Honkanen's program found the lowest 
cost for the 47 point problem, and used only 2.9 seconds!
(I am not speaking of the lowest possible cost here, just the lowest
cost found by any program.)

The three problem files, for 47, 110 and 111 points, are available by
return e-mail.



