The traveling salesman problem (TSP) is a well-known and
important combinatorial optimization problem. The goal is to
find the shortest tour that visits each city in a given list exactly
once and then returns to the starting city. In contrast to its
simple definition, solving the TSP is difficult since it is an NPcomplete
problem [4]. Apart from its theoretical approach, the
TSP has many applications. Some typical applications of TSP
include vehicle routing, computer wiring, cutting wallpaper and
job sequencing. The main application in statistics is
combinatorial data analysis, e.g., reordering rows and columns
of data matrices or identifying clusters.