Xkcd: Travelling Salesman Problem

by bkrausz • 18 years ago

41 14 18 years ago

So I looked through the last 10-15 or so of the xkcd comics, and maybe 3-4 of them were what I considered HN material (Feynman, this one, etc) and a bunch that were not (tripping band kids, punch buggy, tapping, etc). The appropriate ones (like this) have a lot of upvotes, the others don't. I'm happy to announce that the system is working, the good ones are rising and the bad ones are getting ignored.

Remember, commenting to complain about the bad ones makes them rise to the top of the front page!

schleyfox• 18 years ago

"A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language."

Notice how only one of those is math. I think it is by design that only ~1/3 of them are HN material.

pchristensen2• 18 years ago

Don't get me wrong, lots of those other ones were funny, just not HN material. I'm a faithful subscriber to their RSS feed.

brent• 18 years ago

In the last 16 I saw 10 I would expect to be of interest to at least a handful of readers here:

The Drake Equation (funny math)

How it works (stereotypes & math)

Advanced Technology (von neumann machines)

Fuck Grapefruit (scatter plot about perception)

Nightmares (creative subconscious, what's not to love?)

Ultimate Game (D&D is not for me, but I think it fits the crowd)

Kilobyte

Morning (dead pixels)

Zombie Feynman

TSP

aaco• 18 years ago

Before reading "O(1)" I thought it would be written "Priceless".

However I think that's the idea, but using programmers currency.

parker• 18 years ago

This proves without a doubt that selling online solves np-hard complexity. And you don't even need a Turing Machine.

ivankirigin• 18 years ago

The reviews on ebay are turing complete. You might think people are giving over the top reviews with their "A+++++++++", but that's just unary notation.

bkrausz• 18 years ago

Syntax error...you have an odd number of pluses :P

hugh2• 18 years ago

Shouldn't it be O(N)? I mean, the time taken to pack and send your products will still scale linearly with the number of customers, right?

brlewis• 18 years ago

You raise a good point, but O(1) is a much better punch line.

tel• 18 years ago

It's definitely more stark, but O(N) would have gotten a chuckle from the intended audience and a nod to Randall for getting his complexity right.

But I'm just advocating for the devil...

Tichy• 18 years ago

I didn't gain any insights from that cartoon.

girk• 18 years ago

One of best xkcd comics in recent memory. Come Monday, I'll be printing it out and taping it up on my monitor.

Xkcd: Travelling Salesman Problem

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