# I Real life traveling salesman problem

#### beamthegreat

Summary
How to find optimal route for a trip to multiple cities
If a person is from New York, and he/she wants to visit Paris, Rome, Munich, Bern, and Madrid in a single trip, what's the shortest route to take? Are there any practical online tools you can use to solve this problem that doesn't require you to have knowledge of programming or mathematics?

#### Math_QED

Homework Helper
Here we have 6 cities to visit. This is solvable by brute force techniques.

You start in NY, thus you have 5 options for the first city, 4 for the next one etc. So eventually, you have $5! =120$ possible routes. Now, pick the one with minimal distance.

#### DavidSnider

Gold Member
Wolfram alpha can do this with simple location data (as the bird flies), but not with roads \ railway \ airports I don't think. Shortest Path

#### pasmith

Homework Helper
I think you'd want to optimise time or cost rather than distance here.

"Real life traveling salesman problem"

### Physics Forums Values

We Value Quality
• Topics based on mainstream science
• Proper English grammar and spelling
We Value Civility
• Positive and compassionate attitudes
• Patience while debating
We Value Productivity
• Disciplined to remain on-topic
• Recognition of own weaknesses
• Solo and co-op problem solving