The Tourist Problem

Prologue: The Tourist Problem was "my invention" way-back in June 1987 when I first came to NUS, Singapore. They are the first set of transparencies I wrote for the course "CS203: Data Structures". Since then, I have used it for a large variety of settings. Recently, I moved it to powerpoint, updated it, added "Hands-On-Activities" and more pedagogical enhancements.

In Week 2 of UIT2201, I covered a fast-track version of "The Tourist Problem".

The Big Picture:  The big goal is to illustrate computational problem solving in computer science, problem statement, problem analysis, problem modelling, problem solving and so on.

Along the way, I wanted to illustrate several things -- (a) asking questions, (b) giving simple, obvious solutions where they exists, and (c) analyzing the solutions; (c) asking more questions to address the problems, and so on. The point is that, if we keep doing this, then at some point, we arrive at interesting version of the problem and can work on interesting solutions.

And, I wanted to debunk the myth that to do interesting computer science, you must do programming.

The Specifics: After sufficient modeling, the problem of scheduling bus trips for the tourists is modelled as a graph colouring problem.  (...post to be continued...)