From: Gary Hampson <gary@buttercups.demon.co.uk>
Newsgroups: sci.math
Subject: Re: apply math to this...
Date: Thu, 20 Mar 1997 19:11:42 +0000

In article <5gmj7e$h7j@bertrand.ccs.carleton.ca>, Colin Roch
<croch@chat.carleton.ca> writes
>
>How would one determining the most efficient way to collect leaves with a
>rake and garbage bags or scape a rink (that sort of thing) given the
>many various conditions concerning details such as the wide of the shovel,
>geometry of back yard/ rink etc. etc?  What general problem do these
>activities boil down to and is there a specific field of mathematics that
>deals with this problem?
>
>hey?
>----------------------------------------------------------------------     
>Colin Roch
>Ottawa, Ontario, CANADA.                                     
>Email address: croch@chat.carleton.ca      
>----------------------------------------------------------------------
Operations research, in particular algorithms such as simulated anealing
which solve the travelling salesman problem. A genetic algorithm could
also be worth a try.
-- Gary Hampson