Slashdot Mirror
Bees Beat Machines At 'Traveling Salesman' Problem
eldavojohn writes "Recent research on bumble bees has proven that the tiny bee is better than computers at the traveling salesman problem. As bees visit flowers to collect nectar and pollen they discover other flowers en route in the wrong order. But they still manage to quickly learn and fly the optimally shortest path between flowers. Such a problem is NP-Hard and keeps our best machines thinking for days searching for a solution but researchers are quite interested how such a tiny insect can figure it out on the fly — especially given how important this problem is to networks and transportation. A testament to the power of even the smallest batch of neurons or simply evidence our algorithms need work?"
Do the bees ever get it wrong or at least not perfect? Seems obvious they world. I'd imagine the power lies in "good enough" thinking vs "perfect" thinking.
How apropos of the "good enough" thinking you seem to espouse!
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
Yeah, and unfortunately they would deserve that tenure more than many that already have it.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.