The Price of Diversity of the Traveling Salesman Problem

Abstract: This paper introduces the concept of the "Price of Diversity" (PoD) in discrete optimization problems, quantifying the trade-off between solution diversity and cost. For a minimization problem, the PoD is defined as the worst-case ratio, over all instances, of the minimum achievable cost of a diverse set of $k$ solutions to the cost of a single optimal solution for the same instance. Here, the cost of a $k$-solution set is determined by the most expensive solution within the set. Focusing on the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP) as a key example, we study the PoD in the setting where $k$ edge-disjoint tours are required. We establish that, asymptotically, the PoD of finding two edge-disjoint tours is $\frac{8}{5}$ in a special one-dimensional case and 2 in a general metric space. We obtain these results from analyzing a related fundamental problem: the Shortest Hamiltonian Path problem (SHP), for which we establish similar results.