

Xkcd: Travelling Salesman Problem - bkrausz
http://xkcd.com/399/

======
pchristensen
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
"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.

~~~
pchristensen
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.

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

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

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

~~~
tel
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...

~~~
hugh
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).

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

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

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

mS

------
Tichy
I didn't gain any insights from that cartoon.

