What Travelling Presidential Candidates Save

An anonymous commenter asked what the savings were of the Travelling Presidential Candidate Map (ZIPTPCMap) vs. the ZIPScribbleMap. That was not something I had even thought about, and so the result was quite surprising.

The total travel distance on the ZIPScribbleMap is 1,859,224.14km (1,155,268.3mi), while the path through the ZIPTPCMap is only 408,589.32km (253,885.63mi) long. That is a factor of almost 4.6, which is rather significant. The method used to calculate the TPC path is only about 75% optimal, so that if done properly, the factor could be well above 5.

What this shows is that it clearly pays off to follow a presidential candidate around, rather than just blindly following the ZIP code order without thinking.

Posted by Robert Kosara on February 8, 2007.