The average solution of a TSP instance in a graph

Abstract

We define the average $k$-TSP distance $\mu_{tsp,k}$ of a graph $G$ as the average length of a shortest walk visiting $k$ vertices, i.e. the expected length of the solution for a random TSP instance with $k$ uniformly random chosen vertices. We prove relations with the average $k$-Steiner distance and characterize the cases where equality occurs. We also give sharp bounds for $\mu_{tsp,k}(G)$ given the order of the graph.