We recommended that Santa Claus grab a quick cup of cocoa

[suchona.kani.z]

For us, it was clear: This sounded like one of our favorite problems - no, not "problem" in the sense of worries or inconveniences. Quite the opposite - in the sense of a task that we can master with the right AI technology: "Santa Claus, you are describing a very well-known optimization problem! We call it the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP)."

“The only difference is that I don’t sell anything, I give presents to people...” Santa Claus added firmly, because he didn’t seem to feel understood.

Undeterred, we replied: "Yes, of course! But the problem is the same: we are looking for the shortest round trip through a number of places on the map." We quickly dug out our laptops and modeled a small round trip problem across the seven continents to illustrate the problem. With 7 continents, there are 360 ​​possible different route combinations for macedonia consumer email list route planning! It's easy to lose track and not really know whether the route you've just chosen is the best. However, with our method we came up with a solution quite precisely and knew that it was the best solution! "Look, dear Santa Claus! With this example route, consisting of just one approach point on each of the 7 continents, this route is the shortest and therefore the most economical for your resources! The shortest total distance is therefore only 53,377.43 air miles!"



“Yes! Exactly!” Santa Claus was on the same wavelength as us again and added: “Does that mean you can tell me how efficiently I am flying right now, or even better, how I am actually distributing the presents in the most economical and environmentally friendly way possible?”

"How are you planning your route so far? Let's say you have to fly to these 50 places." We drew a few dots on the whiteboard. "And you start here at the top right at the red dot. What would your route be then?" We handed Santa the pen and pointed to the dots on the whiteboard.



Santa took the pen and started to draw. "Actually, I'm already optimizing as much as I can - at least I think so. Once we've unloaded the presents at one place, my reindeer get ready to take off again. In the meantime, I look to see which place is closest to us, i.e. the one to which we have the shortest flight path. And that's exactly where we head for."