In this online course we’ll implement (in Python) together efficient programs for a problem needed by delivery companies all over the world millions times per day — the travelling salesman problem. The goal in this problem is to visit all the given places as quickly as possible. How to find an optimal solution to this problem quickly? We still don’t have provably efficient algorithms for this difficult computational problem and this is the essence of the P versus NP problem, the most important open question in Computer Science. Still, we’ll implement several solutions for real world instances of the travelling salesman problem.
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Delivery Problem
University of California San DiegoAbout this Course
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Beginner Level
Approx. 13 hours to complete
English
Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, English, Spanish
Flexible deadlines
Reset deadlines in accordance to your schedule.
Shareable Certificate
Earn a Certificate upon completion
100% online
Start instantly and learn at your own schedule.
Beginner Level
Approx. 13 hours to complete
English
Subtitles: Arabic, French, Portuguese (European), Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, English, Spanish
Offered by
University of California San Diego
UC San Diego is an academic powerhouse and economic engine, recognized as one of the top 10 public universities by U.S. News and World Report. Innovation is central to who we are and what we do. Here, students learn that knowledge isn't just acquired in the classroom—life is their laboratory.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
5 hours to complete
Traveling Salesman Problem
We start this module with the definition of mathematical model of the delivery problem — the classical traveling salesman problem (usually abbreviated as TSP). We'll then review just a few of its many applications: from straightforward ones (delivering goods, planning a trip) to less obvious ones (data storage and compression, genome assembly). After that, we will together take the first steps in implementing programs for TSP.
5 hours to complete
4 videos (Total 43 min), 1 reading, 5 quizzes
4 hours to complete
Exact Algorithms
We'll see two general techniques applied to the traveling salesman problem. The first one, branch and bound, is a classical approach in combinatorial optimization that is used for various problems. It can be seen as an improvement of the brute force search: we try to construct a permutation piece by piece, but at each step we check whether it still makes sense to continue constructing the permutation (if it doesn't, we just cut off the current branch). The second one, dynamic programming, is arguably the most popular algorithmic technique. It solves a problem by going through a collection of smaller subproblems.
4 hours to complete
4 videos (Total 49 min)
4 hours to complete
Approximation Algorithms
As we've seen in the previous modules, solving the traveling salesman problem exactly is hard. In fact, we don't even expect an efficient solution in the nearest future. For this reason, it makes sense to ask: is it possible to find efficiently a solution that is probably suboptimal, but at the same time is close to optimal? It turns out that the answer is yes! We'll learn two algorithms. The first one guarantees to find quickly a solution which is at most twice longer than the optimal one. The second algorithms does not have such guarantees, but it is known to work pretty well in practice.
4 hours to complete
2 videos (Total 20 min)
Reviews
- 5 stars76.53%
- 4 stars18.15%
- 3 stars2.79%
- 2 stars2.23%
- 1 star0.27%
TOP REVIEWS FROM DELIVERY PROBLEM
by SKDec 30, 2019
Very good course. If you are really good in python then go ahead with this course. Challenging questions to solve.
by DAJun 25, 2020
My personal favourite of the 5 courses in this specialisation due to the programming problems. Was a semi-relaxing way to end the specialisation.
by LFJan 13, 2020
This is a very nice course. I feel that a further explanation in the coding problems would be useful since sometimes you are not sure what one should return from the function.
by AGJun 27, 2020
Well structured introductory course into transportation problems. The code in examples is well written and clean. It was a pleasure to study this course.
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