On Tue, Oct 26, 2010 at 10:26 AM, Roger Hui <[email protected]> wrote: > Without tracking down the detailed references, my reaction is: > > - parallel processing > - heuristic (that solves the problem in limited special cases) > > If they really did "solve the TSP" in the general case, you'd > see the news on the front pages of the Times, on the evening > news on TV, etc.
It is not clear to me whether or not bumblebees use parallel processing, at any significant scale for this problem. Though apparently they do have proportionally large brains: (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2775245/). That said, they very definitely are solving for limited special cases -- the problem size is bounded by how far the bee can fly. Also, I have seen nothing that says that they are always getting the optimal solution -- for practical purposes, "almost optimal" is probably good enough. -- Raul ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
