Amazing Trips
Muse Science Magazine for Kids|March 2023
From a distance, the picture looks like a pen-and-ink study of a super famous painting, the Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci. Up close, all you see is a squiggly mess of connected lines that form a jagged but continuous path.
By Ivars Peterson
Amazing Trips

Robert Bosch, a mathematician at Oberlin College in Ohio, created the image. It is not only an artwork but also a solution to a particular math problem.

Suppose you're planning a trip that takes you to, say, five cities scattered across the country.

You want to visit each city once, following a route that adds up to the shortest possible distance. In this case, there are 120 (5x4x3x2x1 = 120) routes that take you to each of the five cities in turn. You could add up the distances for each route to see which trip would be the shortest.

This story is from the March 2023 edition of Muse Science Magazine for Kids.

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This story is from the March 2023 edition of Muse Science Magazine for Kids.

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