Ant colony algorithm
We solve the traveling salesman problem using an approximate method proposed by Marco Dorigo. We assign lengths and pheromone levels to the edges of the complete K5 graph. We then deploy an "ant," which chooses its route based on the distance to a city and the pheromone level. The pheromone level is determined by the popularity of that route. After traversing the entire route (each vertex is visited once), the ant leaves behind pheromone of a higher level, the shorter the route. This lecture draws on the work of Sergey Shtovba (Ukraine) from the journal Exponenta Pro, 2003, and the author ("Graphs in Maple").