Matt Damon does real math

Very good new book by William Cook, Professor at Georgia Tech - - In Pursuit of the Traveling Saleman (2012).  Cook covers the evolution and search for an efficient solution to the infamous Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP).  Interesting book, even for the operations research geeky community, which I am a member of.

A portion of the book covers the work of Arthur Cayley.  Cayley's field of interest was mathematical trees.  He saw the world of TSP as more botanical than most - - "In a tree of N knots, selecting any knot at pleasure as a root, the tree may be regarded as springing from this root, and it is then a root-tree."  I mention this because the book points out the Matt Damon character in the film Good Will Hunting in the scene displayed (I think it is the scene at the beginning of the movie when he is mopping the hallway and comes across the problem) utilizes Cayley's formula for the number of trees with n vertices, together with several examples.  Note the tree-like structure in the problem.