Thanks for the contribution! I don't think I've solved a problem with simulated annealing before, so I'm excited to learn!

Regarding the article, I haven't thoroughly reviewed yet, but initially what I see is that README.md needs to be updated and some of the formatting is not rendering properly (reduce the spaces between $$).

You can preview: https://cp-algorithms.com/preview.html.

Please give the title of the practice problem in addition to the links.(Hyperlink the title of the problem).

Consider naming the function and making it callable rather than using int main{}

Thanks.

@mhayter , Thanks for reviewing my PR. I've fixed the changes you mentioned. I'm not able to figure out why the preview throws an error when I write the following cpp inline code :

points = {{0,0},{2,2},{0,2},{2,0},{0,1},{1,2},{2,1},{1,0}};

This is trivial, as the actual values of these points isnt important and for now I've replaced it with a comment asking the user to fill it in with a set of points of their own choice.
Lmk if there is anything else I need to change.

Thanks for your progress this far. Unfortunately there are still many variables/ formula that don't render well or are not formatted at all like $s$ , $T$, $s_{next}$, the acceptance function, etc.

You're right I was curious about the $points$ initialization error too.

Regarding the substance of the article, I believe that the analogy of how 'temperature' plays into this process need to be explained likely via analogy.

Also, it may make more sense to have a more descriptive function name than $E()$. It seems like this may be 'standard' so maybe I'm incorrect here but, in a vacuum, I see $E()$ and it doesn't mean anything to me.

Also, there seemed to be confusing capitalization conventions like capitalizing state and temperature, which is unclear on why that convention was chosen.

Again these are just initial thoughts. I hoping someone more senior, will review this as well but I believe we owe you prompt feedback given your timely response.

I've implemented simulating annealing for fun in the past but not for programming contests because randomized and not guaranteed to get the right answer. Unlike say convex optimization or iterative relaxation which is guaranteed to converge.

@mhayter Thanks once more for the quick response. I agree that the temperature part could have been elaborated more, so I added a small section on how this algorithm works. with respect to the formatting, I've tried to fix everything, but I'll go through it once more.

Okay, I've been going through the code more closely.

I've implemented a simple dp (though I probably should have used chatgpt or google) to solve TSP and paired it against this algorithm.

• As far as the algorithms is concerned, its not clear to me as a novice how I should set T and u.

• Stylistically, we can use swap() in c++ for the points indices.

• Using exp() probably makes sense relative to defining e and using pow

• Choosing the points indices is quite strange and should cause overflow (rand() % points.size(); should roughly work)

• We need to make it more obvious on how to initialized the points array:
  (Perhaps consider having an copy constructor i.e. state(const vector<pair<int,int>> &points) )?

Removing capitalization of 'state' would be consistent.
I'm American so I'm not sure if we use British neighbour (it's probably fine though.)

Cool article though. I was able to get a prototype working which I haven't done before.

I'd still like @adamant-pwn or @jakobkogler to review.

@mhayter Thanks for suggesting the improvements.

• I wrote how I'd approach choosing values for T and u.
• Initially, I didn't use exp() , because I wanted to show that it is possible to modify the base of the exponent. I've explained why this is useful in the further modification section. I still modified the original PAF to use exp().
• I implemented the copy constructor in the format state(state& s);, to keep up with the definition of the copy constructor.

I also figured out the cause for the double curly braces problem from my first commit : Double curly braces and HTML
and how to fix it : Solution to the double curly braces problem

Let me know if there are any further changes.

@mhayter @adamant-pwn Any updates in this regard?

Thanks for your patience. Unfortunately, for articles where I'm not an expert, I'm leaving a final review to more senior experts like @adamant-pwn and @jakobkogler.

Thank you for creating the article though. I'm sure it will eventually be accepted as it is useful.

PS I think you should respond to the points specifically made by @adamant-pwn in the "conversation" portion or resolve them so the review can be done more easily.

Is there any update here? This seemed like a worthwhile article to me.

I was caught up with other commitments and I couldn't work on this. I'll send updates over the weekend.

Hi @adamant-pwn @mhayter it shows changes requested but I'm not able to see anything. Is there anything I need to do? I'd also like to apologize, I accidently hit close merge request and the preview is no longer visible.

I've generated the new preview. If we can't get a review by @adamant-pwn in a week or two, I'll consider publishing it as the original article was useful for me( I was able to piece together a solution using your template.).

Unfortunately we don't have dedicated enough or, perhaps in my case, experienced enough volunteers, so reviews are difficult for new articles.

The lack of timely responses I imagine must be discouraging for current and future authors.

I'm sorry about that.