Structures and Strategies for

3 State Space Search

3.0 Introduction 3.4 Epilogue and

References
3.1 Graph Theory
3.5 Exercises
3.2 Strategies for State
Space Search
3.3 Using the State Space to
Represent Reasoning
with the Predicate
Calculus

1
Chapter Objectives

• Learn the basics of state space representation

• Learn the basics of search in state space
• The agent model: Has a problem, searches for
a solution.

2
Chapter 3: Search Quotations

In order to cope, an organism must either armor

itself (like a tree or a clam) and “hope for the
best” or else develop methods for getting out of
harm and into the better neighbourhoods of the
vicinity. If you follow this later course, you are
confronted with the primordial problem that
every agent must continually solve: No what do
I do?
- Daniel C Dennett, “Consciousness Explained”

3
Chapter 3: Search Quotations

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other.

- Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”

4
Intro: Theory of State Space Search

Is the problem solver guaranteed to find a

solution?
Will the problem solver always terminate? Can
it become caught in an infinite loop?
When a solution is found, is it guaranteed to be
optimal?
What is the complexity of the search process in
terms of time usage? Memory usage?
How can the interpreter most effectively reduce
search complexity?
How can an interpreter be designed to most
effectively utilize a representation language?
5
Graph theory: The city of Königsberg

The city is divided by a river. There are two

islands at the river. The first island is connected
by two bridges to both riverbanks and is also
connected by a bridge to the other island. The
second island two bridges each connecting to
one riverbank.
Question: Is there a walk around the city that
crosses each bridge exactly once?
Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler invented
graph theory to solve this problem.

6
The city of Königsberg

7
Graph of the Königsberg bridge system

8
Definition of a graph

A graph consists of
• A set of nodes (can be infinite)
• A set of arcs that connect pairs of nodes.
An arc is an ordered pair, e.g.,
(i1, rb1),
(rb1, i1).

9
A labeled directed graph

10
A rooted tree, exemplifying family
relationships

11
Definition of a graph (cont’d)

A graph consists of nodes and arcs.

If a directed arc connects N and M, N is called
the parent, and M is called the child. If N is also
connected to K, M and K are siblings.
A rooted tree has a unique node which has no
parents. The edges in a rooted tree are directed
away from the root. Each node in a rooted tree
has a unique parent.

12
Definition of a graph (cont’d)

A leaf or tip node is a node that has no children

(sometimes also called a dead end).
A path of length n is an ordered sequence of
n+1 nodes such that the graph contains arcs
from each node to the following ones.
E.g., [a b e] is a path of length 2.
On a path in a rooted graph, a node is said to be
an ancestor of all the nodes positioned after it
(to its right), as well as a descendant of all
nodes before it (to its left).

13
Definition of a graph (cont’d)

A path that contains any node more than once

is said to contain a cycle or loop.
A tree is a graph in which there is a unique path
between every pair of nodes.
Two nodes are said to be connected if a path
exists that includes them both.

14
A unifying view (Newell and Simon)

The problem space consists of:

• a state space which is a set of states
representing the possible configurations of the
world
• a set of operators which can change one state
into another
The problem space can be viewed as a graph
where the states are the nodes and the arcs
represent the operators.

15
Searching on a graph (simplified)

Start with the initial state (root)

Loop until goal found
find the nodes accessible from the root

16
1 4 3 1 4 3

7 6 7 6 2

5 8 2 5 8

17
State space of the 8-puzzle generated by
“move blank” operations

18
State space search

Represented by a four-tuple [N,A,S,GD], where:

• N is the problem space
• A is the set of arcs (or links) between nodes.
These correspond to the operators.
• S is a nonempty subset of N. It represents the
start state(s) of the problem.
• GD is a nonempty subset of N. It represents
the goal state(s) of the problem. The states in
GD are described using either:
a measurable property of the states
a property of the path developed in the
search (a solution path is a path from
node S to a node in GD )
19
The 8-puzzle problem as state space search

• states: possible board positions

• operators: one for sliding each square in each
of four directions,
or, better, one for moving the blank square in
each of four directions
• initial state: some given board position
• goal state: some given board position
Note: the “solution” is not interesting here, we
need the path.

20
State space of the 8-puzzle (repeated)

21
Traveling salesperson problem as state space
search

The salesperson has n cities to visit and must

then return home. Find the shortest path to
travel.
• state space:
• operators:
• initial state:
• goal state:

22
An instance of the traveling salesperson
problem

23
Search of the traveling salesperson
problem. (arc label = cost from root)

24
 Nearest neighbor path

Nearest neighbor path = AEDBCA (550)

Minimal cost path = ABCDEA (375) 25
Tic-tac-toe as state space search

• states:
• operators:
• initial state:
• goal state:
Note: this is a “two-player” game

26
Goal-directed search

27
Data-directed search

28
29
Trace of backtracking search (Fig. 3.12)

30
A trace of backtrack on the graph of
Fig. 3.12

31
Graph for BFS and DFS (Fig. 3.13)

32
Breadth_first search algorithm

33
Trace of BFS on the graph of Fig. 3.13

34
Graph of Fig. 3.13 at iteration 6 of BFS

35
Depth_first_search algorithm

36
Trace of DFS on the graph of Fig. 3.13

37
Graph of Fig. 3.13 at iteration 6 of DFS

38
BFS, label = order state was removed
from OPEN

39
DFS with a depth bound of 5, label =
order state was removed from OPEN

40
State space graph of a set of
implications in propositional calculus

41
And/or graph of the expression qrp

42
Hypergraph

A hypergraph consists of:

N: a set of nodes.
H: a set of hyperarcs.
Hyperarcs are defined by ordered pairs in which
the first element of the pairs is a single node
from N and the second element is a subset of N.
An ordinary graph is a special case of
hypergraph in which all the sets of descendant
nodes have a cardinality of 1.

43
And/or graph of the expression qrp

44
And/or graph of a set of propositional
calculus expressions

45
And/or graph of the part of the state
space for integrating a function (Nilsson 1971)

47
The solution subgraph showing that fred
is at the museum

48
Facts and rules for the example

49
Five rules for a simple subset of English
grammar

50
Figure 3.25: And/or graph for the grammar of Example 3.3.6. Some of the nodes (np, art, etc.)
have been written more than once to simplify drawing the graph.

51
Parse tree for the sentence

52
“Blind search”

BFS and DFS are blind in the sense that they

have no knowledge about the problem at all
other than the problem space
Such techniques are also called brute-force
search, uninformed search, or weak methods
Obviously, we can’t expect too much from
these, but they provide
 Worst-case scenarios
 A basis for more interesting algorithms later on

53
BFS and DFS

Worst case scenarios are equally bad

(exponential)
How to evaluate search algorithms
 Completeness: a search algorithm is complete if it is
guaranteed to find a solution when one exists
 Quality of solution: usually the path cost
 Time cost of finding the solution: usually in terms of
number of nodes generated or examined
 Memory cost of finding the solution: how many nodes do
we have to keep around during the search

54
Evaluating BFS

• Complete?
Yes
• Optimal quality solution?
Yes
• Time required in the worst case
O(bd)
• Memory required in the worst case (in OPEN)
O(bd)
where b is the branching factor, d is the depth
of the solution

55
Evaluating DFS

• Complete?
Yes (only if the tree is finite)
• Optimal quality solution?
No
• Time required in the worst case
O(bm)
• Memory required in the worst case (in OPEN)
O(bm)
where b is the branching factor, m is the
maximum depth of the tree

56
Example search problems

Puzzles: missionaries and cannibals,

cryptarithmetic, 8-puzzle, 15-puzzle, Rubik’s cube,
n-queens, the Tower of Hanoi, …
2-player games: chess, checkers, Chinese Go, …
Proving theorems in logic and geometry
Path finding
“Industrial” problems: VLSI layout design,
assembling a complex object
“AI problems”: speech recognition, planning, …

57
The importance of the problem space

The choice of a problem space makes a big

difference
in fact, finding a good abstraction is half
of the problem
Intelligence is needed to figure out what
problem space to use
still poorly understood: the human
problem solver is conducting a search in the
space of problem spaces

58