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Re:Xkcd: Travelling Salesman Problem by hugh on Friday March 21, 2008 @07:06PM (#142901)
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?
Re:Xkcd: Travelling Salesman Problem by brlewis on Friday March 21, 2008 @09:20PM (#142995)
You raise a good point, but O(1) is a much better punch line.
Re:Xkcd: Travelling Salesman Problem by tel on Saturday March 22, 2008 @01:16AM (#143128)
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...

Re:Xkcd: Travelling Salesman Problem by hugh on Saturday March 22, 2008 @07:43PM (#143645)
Well, just to argue against my original point, the scaling of the travelling salesman problem usually applies to the time taken to figure out the optimal route, not the time taken to actually traverse it, which is O(N). If you're just looking at the route-planning stage, then the "sod it, I'll just sell on eBay" algorithm is indeed O(1).