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Seminar Work: "A Visit To Prague"
Seminar Work: "A Visit To Prague"
Prague
Faculty of Mechanical
Engineering
Seminar Work
“A visit to Prague”
Operations Research
(AE1M16OVY)
“A visit to Prague” – Seminar Work Guido Piotrowski
Introduction
During this Seminar Work I will be analyzing Prague city from the point of view of a tourist who has just
arrived in. He will be probably wondering how to organize his journey in order to get the best of such a
diverse city.
As many others, this tourist has decided to dedicate only 1 day in Prague, of his whole trip around Europe.
And moreover, his budget is quite tight.
In numbers, he has
= 1 −
−
−
−
= 24 ℎ − 8 ℎ − 1 ℎ . 4 − 3 ℎ − 1 ℎ = 8 ℎ
Secondly, he brought 1000 with him, to spend in that day.
The tourist is very confident when using Trip Advisor, a well-known website that gathers tourist review
of places. In it, people can rate, from 1 to 5 stars, how good their experience was.
He has rarely been disappointed by those reviews, so he decided to visit the places priorily according to
the highest rating, and get the most of the stars in that visit to Prague.
On the other hand, he took into account the prices and time that each attraction he was interested in
implies. He built the following table:
Price Time
ci Name
CZK EUR hs
1 Old Town (Stare Mesto) 274,30 10,00 1,00
2 Castle Tour 960,05 35,00 2,50
3 Karluv Most 0,00 0,00 0,50
4 State Opera 1536,08 56,00 2,00
5 Zegway tour 2000,00 72,91 1,00
6 The Powder Tower 70,00 2,55 0,75
7 KGB Museum 246,87 9,00 2,00
8 Zizkov Television Tower 274,30 10,00 2,00
From Trip Advisor website, he collected all user ratings to build a general result. He determined that each
value represented the specific rate, and that an attraction that lasts longer necessarily represents a bigger
value:
After deciding which attractions are best to do, the tourist will need to now which is the best way to get
to those; in the optimal time cost.
Method proposal
This case introduces a list of 8 items, which need to be determined if to do or not, ir order to maximize a
function restricted by 2 inequations (constrains). This means that the case is a bivalent integer problem (0
and 1). To solve it, I will use the "Branch & Bound method", seen in class.
a systematic enumeration of candidate solutions by means of state space search: the set of candidate
solutions is thought of as forming a rooted tree with the full set at the root.
The algorithm explores branches of this tree, which represent subsets of the solution set. Before
enumerating the candidate solutions of a branch, the branch is checked against upper and lower
estimated bounds on the optimal solution, and is discarded if it cannot produce a better solution than the
best one found so far by the algorithm.
Data input
: " = 4,71. %& + 11,66. %) + 2,29. %+ + 9,21. %, + 4,98. %- + 3,1. %. + 8,94. %/ + 7,98. %0
ST:
274,30. %& + 960,05. %) + 0. %+ + 1536,08. %, + 2000. %- + 70. %. + 246,87. %/ + 274,30. %0 ≤ 2000 [5"]
1 1. %& + 2,5. %) + 0,5. %+ + 2. %, + 1. %- + 0,75. %. + 2. %/ + 2. %0 ≤ 8 [ℎ]
%7 ∈ 90; 1;, = 1, 2, … ,8
Results
Looking at the Output sheet, the best result is given for 11100011, which give a " = 35,57956.
Analysis
Reviewing all the possible combinations, it is clear that the Zegway tour (%- ) only increases " in 4,98,
and has used all the budget available. Only by going to the Castle tour (%) ) it is possible to increase " to
11,66, and moreover, we still have some money and time to use.
Similarly, the State Opera makes " = 9,21, and takes 1536,08 CZK. The Castle Tour, Z=11,66, and uses
less money. Ideally, we could use both, but in that case, the cost is 2496,130 5" > 2000 5".
It is now clearer, that the branch is through the Castle tour.
Fortunately, it is free to visit Karluv Most and only takes 30 min of the available time; despite the "
increase is only 2,29. But it helps to maximize the function, for sure.
From 8 possible points, we came to the conclusion that only 5 give us the optimal solution for best rating.
Now we need to decide which is the best way to get to those points, according to the map coordinates.
Figure 3. Best walking path according to Google Maps, between Prague's Castle and KGB Museum.
I located those 5 points in Google Maps, and trace the optimal walking paths between each 2 points. The
results are shown in the following table:
Cost
Edge
(min)
1 2 19
1 3 9
1 7 19
1 8 41
3 2 16
3 7 8
3 8 44
2 7 6
2 8 54
7 8 56
Graphically,
19
1 2
9 19 6
16
41
54
3 7
8
56
44
8
Method proposal
As all this 5 points have to be match in one single path, I propose the “Minimum Spanning Tree
Method”
19
1 2
9 16 19
6
41 54
3 7
8
8 56
44
Results
According to the graph, our “Minimum Spanning Tree” is connected like this
2 7 3 1 8
Final Conclusion
We have just analyzed a very common situation of a tourist in Prague. All the data input was obtain from
internet (distances, best ratings) and mixed with a truthful money and time restriction.
In other words, this could be a perfectly normal situation, besides reality doesn’t always match the
numbers (delays, getting lost, not having enough available time, etc.).
But, in general terms, we have just proved how a simple Operations Research model can simplify such a
daily person’s problem.
According to Prague City Tourism1,
“The funicular on Petřín Hill carried 1,817,233 passengers in 2013. Prague Castle
welcomed 1,748,000 paying visitors, and more than 6 million visitors passed through
the castle grounds. The number one Prague tower was the Old Town Hall tower,
where 623,539 tourists climbed to the top.”
Millions of tourists visit the city every year, and have to face similar problems to the one analyzed during
this inform. So, a numeric solution (and for e.g. offered on internet, that could calculate the results
automatically) could make their life easier when making a trip decision.
1
Source: http://www.praguecitytourism.cz/en/our-services/statistics-and-analysis-/visitor-statistics-for-prague-
heritage-sites
Bibliography
• Class notebook.
• Hillier Lieberman – “Introduction to Operations Research”
o Taha – “Operations Research - An introduction”
o TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com)
o http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g274707-d275451-Reviews-
Old_Town_Stare_Mesto-Prague_Bohemia.html
o http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g274707-d276185-Reviews-
St_Vitus_Cathedral-Prague_Bohemia.html
o http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g274707-d275157-Reviews-
Charles_Bridge_Karluv_Most-Prague_Bohemia.html
o http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g274707-d6782276-Reviews-
Ballooning_CZ-Prague_Bohemia.html
o http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g274707-d4881452-Reviews-
Zizkov_Televison_Tower-Prague_Bohemia.html
o http://www.tripadvisor.es/Attraction_Review-g274707-d318576-Reviews-
The_Powder_Tower-Prague_Bohemia.html
o http://www.tripadvisor.es/Attraction_Review-g274707-d2665565-Reviews-
KGB_Museum-Prague_Bohemia.html
o http://www.tripadvisor.es/Attraction_Review-g274707-d4881452-Reviews-
Zizkov_Televison_Tower-Prague_Bohemia.html
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_spanning_tree
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branch_and_bound
Annex