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Artificial Intelligence
Handouts Lectures 12 - 14
1 Discussion on Problem Solving
In the previous chapter we studied problem solving in general and elaborated on
various search strategies that help us solve problems through searching in problem
trees. We kept the information about the tree traversal in memory (in the queues),
thus we know the links that have to be followed to reach the goal. At times we don’t
really need to remember the links that were followed. In many problems where the
size of search space grows extremely large we often use techniques in which we
don’t need to keep all the history in memory. Similarly, in problems where
requirements are not clearly defined and the problem is ill-structured, that is, we
don’t exactly know the initial state, goal state and operators etc, we might employ
such techniques where our objective is to find the solution not how we got there.

Another thing we have noticed in the previous chapter is that we perfrom a

sequential search through the search space. In order to speed up the techniques we
can follow a parallel approach where we start from multiple locations (states) in the
solution space and try to search the space in parallel.

2 Hill Climbing in Parallel

Suppose we were to climb up a hill. Our goal is to reach the top irrespective of how
we get there. We apply different operators at a given position, and move in the
direction that gives us improvement (more height). What if instead of starting from
one position we start to climb the hill from different positions as indicated by the
diagram below.

In other words, we start with different independent search instances that start from
different locations to climb up the hill.

Further think that we can improve this using a collaborative approach where these
instances interact and evolve by sharing information in order to solve the problem.
You will soon find out that what we mean by interact and evolve.
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However, it is possible to implement parallelism in the sense that the instances can
interact and evolve to solve the solution. Such implementations and algorithms are
motivated from the biological concept of evolution of our genes, hence the name
Genetic Algorithms, commonly terms as GA.

3 Comment on Evolution
Before we discuss Genetic Algorithms in detail with examples lets go though some
basic terminology that we will use to explain the technique. The genetice algorithm
technology comes from the concept of human evolution. The following paragraph
gives a brief overview of evolution and introduces some terminologies to the extent
that we will require for further discussion on GA. Individuals (animals or plants)
produce a number of offspring (children) which are almost, but not entirely, like
themselves. Variation may be due to mutation (random changes), or due to
inheritance (offspring/children inherit some characteristics from each parent). Some
of these offspring may survive to produce offspring of their own—some will not. The
“better adapted” individuals are more likely to survive. Over time, generations
become better and better adapted to survive.

4 Genetic Algorithm
Genetic Algorithms is a search method in which multiple search paths are followed
in parallel. At each step, current states of different pairs of these paths are combined
to form new paths. This way the search paths don't remain independent, instead
they share information with each other and thus try to improve the overall
performance of the complete search space.

Basic Genetic Algorithm

A very basic genetic algorithm can be stated as below.

Start with a population of randomly generated, (attempted) solutions to a

problem

Repeatedly do the following:

Evaluate each of the attempted solutions
Keep the “best” solutions
Produce next generation from these solutions (using “inheritance”
and “mutation”)

Quit when you have a satisfactory solution (or you run out of time)

The two terms introduced here are inheritance and mutation. Inheritance has the
same notion of having something or some attribute from a parent while mutation
refers to a small random change. We will explain these two terms as we discuss the
solution to a few problems through GA.
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5 Solution to a Few Problems using GA

5.1 Problem 1:

• Suppose your “individuals” are 32-bit computer words

• You want a string in which all the bits in these words are ones
• Here’s how you can do it:
• Create 100 randomly generated computer words
• Repeatedly do the following:
• Count the 1 bits in each word
• Exit if any of the words have all 32 bits set to 1
• Keep the ten words that have the most 1s (discard the rest)
• From each word, generate 9 new words as follows:
• Pick a random bit in the word and toggle (change) it
• Note that this procedure does not guarantee that the next “generation”
will have more 1 bits, but it’s likely

As you can observe, the above solution is totally in accordance with the basic
algorithm you saw in the previous section. The table on the next page shows which
steps correspond to what.

Terms Basic GA Problem 1 Solution

Initial Start with a Create 100 randomly generated computer
Population population of words
randomly generated
attempted solutions to
a problem

Evaluation Evaluate each of the Count the 1 bits in each word.

Function attempted solutions. Exit if any of the words have all 32 bits set to
Keep the “best” 1
solutions
Keep the ten words that have the most 1s
(discard the rest)

Mutation Produce next From each word, generate 9 new words as

generation from these follows:
solutions (using Pick a random bit in the word and toggle
“inheritance” and (change) it
“mutation”)

For the sake of simplicity we only use mutation for now to generate the new
individuals. We will incorporate inheritance later in the example. Let’s introduce the
concept of an evaluation function. An evaluation function is the criteria that checks
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various individuals/ solutions for being better than others in the population. Notice
that mutation can be as simple as just flipping a bit at random or any number of bits.

We go on repeating the algorithm until we either get our required word that is a 32-
bit number with all ones, or we run out of time. If we run out of time, we either
present the best possible solution (the one with most number of 1-bits) as the
answer or we can say that the solution can’t be found. Hence GA is at times used to
get optimal solution given some parameters.

5.2 Problem 2:
• Suppose you have a large number of data points (x, y), e.g., (1, 4), (3, 9),
(5, 8), ...
• You would like to fit a polynomial (of up to degree 1) through these data
points
• That is, you want a formula y = mx + c that gives you a reasonably
good fit to the actual data
• Here’s the usual way to compute goodness of fit of the
polynomial on the data points:
• Compute the sum of (actual y – predicted y)2 for all the data
points
• The lowest sum represents the best fit
• You can use a genetic algorithm to find a “pretty good” solution

By a pretty good solution we simply mean that you can get reasonably good
polynomial that best fits the given data.

• Your formula is y = mx + c
• Your unknowns are m and c; where m and c are integers
• Your representation is the array [m, c]
• Your evaluation function for one array is:
• For every actual data point (x, y)
• Compute ý = mx + c
• Find the sum of (y – ý)2 over all x
• The sum is your measure of “badness” (larger numbers are
worse)
• Example: For [5, 7] and the data points (1, 10) and (2, 13):
• ý = 5x + 7 = 12 when x is 1
• ý = 5x + 7 = 17 when x is 2
• (10 - 12)2 + (13 – 17)2 = 22 + 42 = 20
• If these are the only two data points, the “badness” of [5, 7]
is 20
• Your algorithm might be as follows:
• Create two-element arrays of random numbers
• Repeat 50 times (or any other number):
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•For each of the arrays, compute its badness (using all data
points)
• Keep the best arrays (with low badness)
• From the arrays you keep, generate new arrays as follows:
• Convert the numbers in the array to binary, toggle
one of the bits at random
• Quit if the badness of any of the solution is zero
• After all 50 trials, pick the best array as your final answer

Let us solve this problem in detail. Consider that the given points are as follows.

• (x, y) : {(1,5) (3, 9)}

We start will the following initial population which are the arrays representing the
solutions (m and c).

• [2 7][1 3]

Compute badness for [2 7]

• ý = 2x + 7 = 9 when x is 1
• ý = 2x + 7 = 13 when x is 3
• (5 – 9)2 + (9 – 13)2 = 42 + 42 = 32

• ý = 1x + 3 = 4 when x is 1
• ý = 1x + 3 = 6 when x is 3
• (5 – 4)2 + (9 – 6)2 = 12 + 32 = 10

• Lets keep the one with low “badness” [1 3]

• Representation [001 011]
• Apply mutation to generate new arrays [011 011]
• Now we have [1 3] [3 3] as the new population considering that we keep
the two best individuals

Second iteration

• (x, y) : {(1,5) (3, 9)}

• [1 3][3 3]
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• ý = 1x + 3 = 4 when x is 1
• ý = 1x + 3 = 6 when x is 3
• (5 – 4)2 + (9 – 6)2 = 12 + 32 = 10

• ý = 3x + 3 = 6 when x is 1
• ý = 3x + 3 = 12 when x is 3
• (5 – 6)2 + (9 – 12)2 = 1 + 9 = 10

• Lets keep the [3 3]

• Representation [011 011]
• Apply mutation to generate new arrays [010 011]
• Now we have [3 3] [2 3] as the new population

Third Iteration

• (x, y) : {(1,5) (3, 9)}

• [3 3][2 3]
• ý = 3x + 3 = 6 when x is 1
• ý = 3x + 3 = 12 when x is 3
• (5 – 6)2 + (9 – 12)2 = 1 + 9 = 10

• ý = 2x + 3 = 5 when x is 1
• ý = 2x + 3 = 9 when x is 3
• (5 – 5)2 + (9 – 9)2 = 02 + 02 = 0

• Solution found [2 3]
• y = 2x+3

So you see that how by going though the iteration of a GA one can find a solution to
the given problem. It is not necessary in the above example that you get a solution
that gives 0 badness. In case we go on doing iterations and we run out of time, we
might just present the solution that has the least badness as the most optimal
solution given these number of iterations on this data.

In the examples so far, each “Individual” (or “solution”) had only one parent. The only
way to introduce variation was through mutation (random changes). In Inheritance or
Crossover, each “Individual” (or “solution”) has two parents. Assuming that each
organism has just one chromosome, new offspring are produced by forming a new
chromosome from parts of the chromosomes of each parent.

Let us repeat the 32-bit word example again but this time using crossover instead of
mutation.

• Suppose your “organisms” are 32-bit computer words, and you want a
string in which all the bits are ones
• Here’s how you can do it:
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• Create 100 randomly generated computer words

• Repeatedly do the following:
• Count the 1 bits in each word
• Exit if any of the words have all 32 bits set to 1
• Keep the ten words that have the most 1s (discard the rest)
• From each word, generate 9 new words as follows:
• Choose one of the other words
• Take the first half of this word and combine it with
the second half of the other word

Notice that we are generating new individuals from the best ones by using
crossover. The simplest way to perform this crossover is to combine the head of one
individual to the tail of the other, as shown in the diagram below.

In the 32-bit word problem, the (two-parent, no mutation) approach, if it succeeds, is

likely to succeed much faster because up to half of the bits change each time, not
just one bit. However, with no mutation, it may not succeed at all. By pure bad luck,
maybe none of the first (randomly generated) words have (say) bit 17 set to 1. Then
there is no way a 1 could ever occur in this position. Another problem is lack of
genetic diversity. Maybe some of the first generation did have bit 17 set to 1, but
none of them were selected for the second generation. The best technique in
general turns out to be a combination of both, i.e., crossover with mutation.

6 Eight Queens Problem

Let us now solve a famous problem which will be discussed under GA in many
famous books in AI. Its called the Eight Queens Problem.

The problem is to place 8 queens on a chess board so that none of them can attack
the other. A chess board can be considered a plain board with eight columns and
eight rows as shown below.
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The possible cells that the Queen can move to when placed in a particular square
are shown (in black shading)

We now have to come up with a representation of an individual/ candidate solution

representing the board configuration which can be used as individuals in the GA.

We will use the representation as shown in the figure below.

Where the 8 digits for eight columns specify the index of the row where the queen is
placed. For example, the sequence 2 6 8 3 4 5 3 1 tells us that in first column the
queen is placed in the second row, in the second column the queen is in the 6th row
so on till in the 8th column the queen is in the 1st row.

Now we need a fitness function, a function by which we can tell which board position
is nearer to our goal. Since we are going to select best individuals at every step, we
need to define a method to rate these board positions or individuals. One fitness
function can be to count the number of pairs of Queens that are not attacking each
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other. An example of how to compute the fitness of a board configuration is given in

the diagram on the next page.

So once representation and fitness function is decided, the solution to the problem is
simple.

• Choose initial population

• Evaluate the fitness of each individual
• Choose the best individuals from the population for crossover

Let us quickly go though an example of how to solve this problem using GA.
Suppose individuals (board positions) chosen for crossover are:

Where the numbers 2 and 3 in the boxes to the left and right show the fitness of
each board configuration and green arrows denote the queens that can attack none.

The following diagram shows how we apply crossover:

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The individuals in the initial population are shown on the left and the children
generated by swapping their tails are shown on the right. Hence we now have a total
of 4 candidate solutions. Depending on their fitness we will select the best two.

The diagram below shows where we select the best two on the bases of their
fitness. The vertical over shows the children and the horizontal oval shows the
selected individuals which are the fittest ones according to the fitness function.

Similarly, the mutation step can be done as under.

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That is, we represent the individual in binary and we flip at random a certain number
of bits. You might as well decide to flip 1, 2, 3 or k number of bits, at random
position. Hence GA is totally a random technique.

This process is repeated until an individual with required fitness level is found. If no
such individual is found, then the process is repeated till the overall fitness of the
population or any of its individuals gets very close to the required fitness level. An
upper limit on the number of iterations is usually used to end the process in finite
time.

One of the solutions to the problem is shown as under whose fitness value is 8.

The following flow chart summarizes the Genetic Algorithm.

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Start

Initialize
Population

Evaluate Fitness
Apply mutation of Population

Mate No Solution Yes

End
individuals in Found?
population

You are encouraged to explore the internet and other books to find more
applications of GA in various fields like:

• Genetic Programming
• Evolvable Systems
• Composing Music
• Gaming
• Market Strategies
• Robotics
• Industrial Optimization

and many more.

7 Problems
Q1 what type of problems can be solved using GA. Give examples of at least 3
problems from different fields of life. Clearly identify the initial population,
representation, evaluation function, mutation and cross over procedure and exit
criteria.

Q2 Given pairs of (x, y) coordinates, find the best possible m, c parameters of the
line y = mx + c that generates them. Use mutation only. Present the best possible
solution given the data after at least three iterations of GA or exit if you find the
solution earlier.

• (x, y) : {(1,2.5) (2, 3.75)}

• Initial population [2 0][3 1]

Q3 Solve the 8 Queens Problem on paper. Use the representations and strategy as
discussed in the chapter.