Question 1: Short answer
mediumAI-checkedGenetic AlgorithmsThe ordinal representation encodes a tour against a reference list, here (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H). For each city of the tour in turn, write its 1-based position in the current reference list, then delete that city from the list. Encode the tour (A, D, C, G, H, B, E, F).