Math Help: Mar Ching Through Georgia

[jj88]

Can anyone figure this out?

 

[pka]

Can anyone figure this out?

If you are serious, then post a serious problem.

 

[jj88]

If you are serious, then post a serious problem.

If you're so serious, then answering the question shouldn't be too hard for you. I'm not surprised a "math elite" is condescending though.

 

[ksdhart2]

Well, considering the amount of rats will remain the same no matter which city Mar starts in. Similarly, the amount of rats will also remain the same regardless of the path he chooses. This allows us to get rid of all the filler and reduce the problem to "Find the shortest path which visits each city at least once, and ends in either Coastville or Portsburgh." To that end, this seems like a variant of the Travelling Salesman Problem. One approach to solving this problem is to "brute force" it and simply try every possible route then pick the shortest. Various algorithms exist for solving these type of problems, which may or may not prove easier to do by hand. The real question here is: What have you tried? What are your thoughts?

 

[HallsofIvy]

Personally, as a person born in Georgia, I find the title, a reference to Sherman's destruction of much of Georgia during the American civil war, offensive. As ksdhart2 said, since the total number of rats will be the same no matter what route he takes, the problem reduces to finding the shortest route. That can be done by calculating the cost of all routes. Since there are 11 roads to cover there are no more than 11! different routes. Tedious but doable.