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Best-first Search
Best-first search is a class of search algorithms, which explore a graph by expanding the most promising node chosen according to a specified rule. Judea Pearl described the best-first search as estimating the promise of node ''n'' by a "heuristic evaluation function f(n) which, in general, may depend on the description of ''n'', the description of the goal, the information gathered by the search up to that point, and most importantly, on any extra knowledge about the problem domain.". pp. 94 and 95 (note 3). Some authors have used "best-first search" to refer specifically to a search with a heuristic that attempts to predict how close the end of a path is to a solution (or, goal), so that paths which are judged to be closer to a solution (or, goal) are extended first. This specific type of search is called '' greedy best-first search'' or ''pure heuristic search''. Efficient selection of the current best candidate for extension is typically implemented using a priority queue. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Search Algorithm
In computer science, a search algorithm is an algorithm designed to solve a search problem. Search algorithms work to retrieve information stored within particular data structure, or calculated in the search space of a problem domain, with either discrete or continuous values. algorithms are Although search engines use search algorithms, they belong to the study of information retrieval, not algorithmics. The appropriate search algorithm often depends on the data structure being searched, and may also include prior knowledge about the data. Search algorithms can be made faster or more efficient by specially constructed database structures, such as search trees, hash maps, and database indexes. Search algorithms can be classified based on their mechanism of searching into three types of algorithms: linear, binary, and hashing. Linear search algorithms check every record for the one associated with a target key in a linear fashion. Binary, or half-interval, searches repeatedly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graph (data Structure)
In computer science, a graph is an abstract data type that is meant to implement the undirected graph and directed graph concepts from the field of graph theory within mathematics. A graph data structure consists of a finite (and possibly mutable) set of ''vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points''), together with a set of unordered pairs of these vertices for an undirected graph or a set of ordered pairs for a directed graph. These pairs are known as ''edges'' (also called ''links'' or ''lines''), and for a directed graph are also known as ''edges'' but also sometimes ''arrows'' or ''arcs''. The vertices may be part of the graph structure, or may be external entities represented by integer indices or references. A graph data structure may also associate to each edge some ''edge value'', such as a symbolic label or a numeric attribute (cost, capacity, length, etc.). Operations The basic operations provided by a graph data structure ''G'' usually include:See, e.g. , Sectio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Judea Pearl
Judea Pearl (born September 4, 1936) is an Israeli-American computer scientist and philosopher, best known for championing the probabilistic approach to artificial intelligence and the development of Bayesian networks (see the article on belief propagation). He is also credited for developing a theory of causal and counterfactual inference based on structural models (see article on causality). In 2011, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) awarded Pearl with the Turing Award, the highest distinction in computer science, "for fundamental contributions to artificial intelligence through the development of a calculus for probabilistic and causal reasoning". He is the author of several books, including the technical Causality: Models, Reasoning and Inference, and The Book of Why, a book on causality aimed at the general public. Judea Pearl is the father of journalist Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by terrorists in Pakistan connected with Al-Qaeda and the Inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heuristic Function
In mathematical optimization and computer science, heuristic (from Greek εὑρίσκω "I find, discover") is a technique designed for solving a problem more quickly when classic methods are too slow for finding an approximate solution, or when classic methods fail to find any exact solution. This is achieved by trading optimality, completeness, accuracy, or precision for speed. In a way, it can be considered a shortcut. A heuristic function, also simply called a heuristic, is a function that ranks alternatives in search algorithms at each branching step based on available information to decide which branch to follow. For example, it may approximate the exact solution. Definition and motivation The objective of a heuristic is to produce a solution in a reasonable time frame that is good enough for solving the problem at hand. This solution may not be the best of all the solutions to this problem, or it may simply approximate the exact solution. But it is still valuable ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greedy Algorithm
A greedy algorithm is any algorithm that follows the problem-solving heuristic of making the locally optimal choice at each stage. In many problems, a greedy strategy does not produce an optimal solution, but a greedy heuristic can yield locally optimal solutions that approximate a globally optimal solution in a reasonable amount of time. For example, a greedy strategy for the travelling salesman problem (which is of high computational complexity) is the following heuristic: "At each step of the journey, visit the nearest unvisited city." This heuristic does not intend to find the best solution, but it terminates in a reasonable number of steps; finding an optimal solution to such a complex problem typically requires unreasonably many steps. In mathematical optimization, greedy algorithms optimally solve combinatorial problems having the properties of matroids and give constant-factor approximations to optimization problems with the submodular structure. Specifics Greedy algorith ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Priority Queue
In computer science, a priority queue is an abstract data-type similar to a regular queue or stack data structure in which each element additionally has a ''priority'' associated with it. In a priority queue, an element with high priority is served before an element with low priority. In some implementations, if two elements have the same priority, they are served according to the order in which they were enqueued; in other implementations ordering of elements with the same priority remains undefined. While coders often implement priority queues with heaps, they are conceptually distinct from heaps. A priority queue is a concept like a list or a map; just as a list can be implemented with a linked list or with an array, a priority queue can be implemented with a heap or with a variety of other methods such as an unordered array. Operations A priority queue must at least support the following operations: * ''is_empty'': check whether the queue has no elements. * ''insert_wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A* Search Algorithm
A* (pronounced "A-star") is a graph traversal and path search algorithm, which is used in many fields of computer science due to its completeness, optimality, and optimal efficiency. One major practical drawback is its O(b^d) space complexity, as it stores all generated nodes in memory. Thus, in practical travel-routing systems, it is generally outperformed by algorithms which can pre-process the graph to attain better performance, as well as memory-bounded approaches; however, A* is still the best solution in many cases. Peter Hart, Nils Nilsson and Bertram Raphael of Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International) first published the algorithm in 1968. It can be seen as an extension of Dijkstra's algorithm. A* achieves better performance by using heuristics to guide its search. Compared to Dijkstra's algorithm, the A* algorithm only finds the shortest path from a specified source to a specified goal, and not the shortest-path tree from a specified source to all possi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Combinatorial Search
{{no footnotes, date=January 2013 In computer science and artificial intelligence, combinatorial search studies search algorithms for solving instances of problems that are believed to be hard in general, by efficiently exploring the usually large solution space of these instances. Combinatorial search algorithms achieve this efficiency by reducing the effective size of the search space or employing heuristics. Some algorithms are guaranteed to find the optimal solution, while others may only return the best solution found in the part of the state space that was explored. Classic combinatorial search problems include solving the eight queens puzzle or evaluating moves in games with a large game tree, such as reversi or chess. A study of computational complexity theory helps to motivate combinatorial search. Combinatorial search algorithms are typically concerned with problems that are NP-hard. Such problems are not believed to be efficiently solvable in general. However, the vari ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greedy Algorithm
A greedy algorithm is any algorithm that follows the problem-solving heuristic of making the locally optimal choice at each stage. In many problems, a greedy strategy does not produce an optimal solution, but a greedy heuristic can yield locally optimal solutions that approximate a globally optimal solution in a reasonable amount of time. For example, a greedy strategy for the travelling salesman problem (which is of high computational complexity) is the following heuristic: "At each step of the journey, visit the nearest unvisited city." This heuristic does not intend to find the best solution, but it terminates in a reasonable number of steps; finding an optimal solution to such a complex problem typically requires unreasonably many steps. In mathematical optimization, greedy algorithms optimally solve combinatorial problems having the properties of matroids and give constant-factor approximations to optimization problems with the submodular structure. Specifics Greedy algorith ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pseudocode
In computer science, pseudocode is a plain language description of the steps in an algorithm or another system. Pseudocode often uses structural conventions of a normal programming language, but is intended for human reading rather than machine reading. It typically omits details that are essential for machine understanding of the algorithm, such as variable declarations and language-specific code. The programming language is augmented with natural language description details, where convenient, or with compact mathematical notation. The purpose of using pseudocode is that it is easier for people to understand than conventional programming language code, and that it is an efficient and environment-independent description of the key principles of an algorithm. It is commonly used in textbooks and scientific publications to document algorithms and in planning of software and other algorithms. No broad standard for pseudocode syntax exists, as a program in pseudocode is not an executa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Graph (discrete Mathematics)
In discrete mathematics, and more specifically in graph theory, a graph is a structure amounting to a Set (mathematics), set of objects in which some pairs of the objects are in some sense "related". The objects correspond to mathematical abstractions called ''Vertex (graph theory), vertices'' (also called ''nodes'' or ''points'') and each of the related pairs of vertices is called an ''edge'' (also called ''link'' or ''line''). Typically, a graph is depicted in diagrammatic form as a set of dots or circles for the vertices, joined by lines or curves for the edges. Graphs are one of the objects of study in discrete mathematics. The edges may be directed or undirected. For example, if the vertices represent people at a party, and there is an edge between two people if they shake hands, then this graph is undirected because any person ''A'' can shake hands with a person ''B'' only if ''B'' also shakes hands with ''A''. In contrast, if an edge from a person ''A'' to a person ''B'' m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beam Search
In computer science, beam search is a heuristic search algorithm that explores a graph by expanding the most promising node in a limited set. Beam search is an optimization of best-first search that reduces its memory requirements. Best-first search is a graph search which orders all partial solutions (states) according to some heuristic. But in beam search, only a predetermined number of best partial solutions are kept as candidates. It is thus a greedy algorithm. The term "beam search" was coined by Raj Reddy of Carnegie Mellon University in 1977. Details Beam search uses breadth-first search to build its search tree. At each level of the tree, it generates all successors of the states at the current level, sorting them in increasing order of heuristic cost. However, it only stores a predetermined number, \beta, of best states at each level (called the beam width). Only those states are expanded next. The greater the beam width, the fewer states are pruned. With an infinite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
