World Cup Host Cities
FIFA's president crisscrossed North America by private jet during the World Cup — a tangle of flight paths that looks nothing like the shortest possible route between the same host cities.
Where this idea comes from
Start here — this is the source that inspired this exploration.
Introduction
A World Cup runs across a fixed set of host cities, and every team's away support (and the broadcasters) cares about the shortest route between them. Build a weighted graph of the host cities, using flight time or distance as the edge weights, and treat the touring route as a travelling salesman problem: find upper and lower bounds for the shortest possible tour and see how tightly they sandwich the true answer. Graph theory here (syllabus topic 3.16) is AI HL content, so if you are doing AI SL or an AA course, treat this as an extension beyond your normal syllabus.
Guiding Questions
- Look at Infantino's actual flight paths. Turn it into a graph — which cities are the "hub" airports with the most connections?
- Now build a graph of the World Cup host cities with real flight times or distances as edge weights, and find your own route that visits every city.
- How does your best route compare to what Infantino actually flew? Estimate the extra distance — and emissions — his path adds.
- What changes if you optimise for cost instead of distance, or if you're not allowed to repeat any city?