❓ Question
How are the shortest path above and the traveling salesperson problems given above similar?
How are they different?
💡 Answer
Both problems are graph problems and seek the optimal path to fulfill certain criteria.
The difference is that while a Traveling Sales Person is seeking to tour all the nodes, the shortest path is seeking to tour a few nodes optimally.
In the shortest path, when represented as a graph the objective is to find the smallest weight along a path between the two nodes.
In traveling salesperson the object is to minimize the total distance traveled in a tour, visiting each node exactly once