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Informed Search

The document discusses several iterative improvement search methods including hill climbing, simulated annealing, local beam search, and genetic algorithms. It then provides more details on hill climbing, describing how it works, its drawbacks of getting stuck in local optima, and examples. Simulated annealing is introduced as a way to avoid local optima by allowing occasional moves to worse states. Genetic algorithms are inspired by biological evolution to search large spaces.

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40 views27 pages

Informed Search

The document discusses several iterative improvement search methods including hill climbing, simulated annealing, local beam search, and genetic algorithms. It then provides more details on hill climbing, describing how it works, its drawbacks of getting stuck in local optima, and examples. Simulated annealing is introduced as a way to avoid local optima by allowing occasional moves to worse states. Genetic algorithms are inspired by biological evolution to search large spaces.

Uploaded by

Ewrwer Ewrrwer
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Informed

Search
Chapter 4 (b)
Some material adopted from notes
by Charles R. Dyer, University of
Wisconsin-Madison
Today’s class: local search

• Iterative improvement methods


– Hill climbing
– Simulated annealing
– Local beam search
– Genetic algorithms
• Online search
Hill Climbing
• Extended the current path with a successor
node which is closer to the solution than
the end of the current path
• If our goal is to get to the top of a hill, then
always take a step the leads you up
• Simple hill climbing – take any upward step
• Steepest ascent hill climbing – consider all
possible steps, and take the one that goes
up the most
• No memory
Hill climbing on a surface of
states

Height Defined
by Evaluation
Function
Hill-climbing search
• If there exists a successor s for the current state n such that
– h(s) < h(n)
– h(s) <= h(t) for all the successors t of n
then move from n to s. Otherwise, halt at n
• Looks one step ahead to determine if a successor is better
than the current state; if so, move to the best successor.
• Like Greedy search in that it uses h, but doesn’t allow
backtracking or jumping to an alternative path since it
doesn’t “remember” where it has been.
• Is Beam search with a beam width of 1 (i.e., the maximum
size of the nodes list is 1).
• Not complete since the search will terminate at "local
minima," "plateaus," and "ridges."
Hill climbing example
2 8 3 1 2 3
start 1 6 4 h = -4 goal 8 4 h=0
7 5 7 6 5

-5 -5 -2
2 8 3 1 2 3
1 4 h = -3 8 4 h = -1
7 6 5 7 6 5

-3 -4
2 3 2 3
1 8 4 1 8 4 h = -2
7 6 5 7 6 5
h = -3 -4
f(n) = -(number of tiles out of place)
Exploring the Landscape
local maximum
• Local Maxima: peaks that
aren’t the highest point in
plateau
the space
• Plateaus: the space has a
broad flat region that gives
the search algorithm no
direction (random walk)
• Ridges: flat like a plateau, ridge
but with drop-offs to the Image from: http://classes.yale.edu/fractals/CA/GA/Fitness/Fitness.html
sides; steps to the North,
East, South and West may
go down, but a step to the
NW may go up.
Drawbacks of hill climbing
• Problems: local maxima, plateaus, ridges
• Remedies:
– Random restart: keep restarting the search
from random locations until a goal is found.
– Problem reformulation: reformulate the
search space to eliminate these problematic
features
• Some problem spaces are great for hill
climbing and others are terrible.
Example of a local optimum

2 5
-4
1 7 4
start 8 6 3 goal
1 2 5 1 2 5 1 2 3
7 4 7 4 -4 8 4 0
8 6 3 8 6 3 7 6 5
-3
1 2 5
8 7 4 -4
6 3
Hill Climbing and 8 Queens
Annealing

• In metallurgy, annealing is a technique


involving heating and controlled cooling
of a material to increase the size of its
crystals and reduce their defects
• The heat causes the atoms to become unstuck from
their initial positions (a local minimum of the internal
energy) and wander randomly through states of
higher energy.
• The slow cooling gives them more chances of finding
configurations with lower internal energy than the
initial one.
Simulated annealing (SA)
• SA exploits the analogy between how metal cools and
freezes into a minimum-energy crystalline structure &
search for a minimum/maximum in a general system
• SA can avoid becoming trapped at local minima
• SA uses a random search that accepts changes
increasing objective function f and some that
decrease it
• SA uses a control parameter T, which by analogy with
the original application is known as the system
“temperature”
• T starts out high and gradually decreases toward 0
SA intuitions
• combines hill climbing (efficiency) with random walk
(completeness)
• Analogy: getting a ping-pong ball into the deepest
depression in a bumpy surface
– shake the surface to get the ball out of the local minima
– not too hard to dislodge it from the global minimum
• Simulated annealing:
– start by shaking hard (high temperature) and gradually
reduce shaking intensity (lower the temperature)
– escape the local minima by allowing some “bad” moves
– but gradually reduce their size and frequency
Simulated annealing
• A “bad” move from A to B is accepted with a
probability
-(f(B)-f(A)/T)
e
• The higher the temperature, the more likely it is
that a bad move can be made
• As T tends to zero, this probability tends to zero,
and SA becomes more like hill climbing
• If T is lowered slowly enough, SA is complete and
admissible
Simulated annealing algorithm
Local beam search
• Basic idea
– Begin with k random states
– Generate all successors of these states
– Keep the k best states generated by
them
• Provides a simple, efficient way to share
some knowledge across a set of searches
• Stochastic beam search is a variation:
– Probability of keeping a state is a
Genetic algorithms (GA)
• A search technique inspired by evolution
• Similar to stochastic beam search
• Start with k random states (the initial population)
• New states are generated by “mutating” a single
state or “reproducing” (combining) two parent
states (selected according to their fitness)
• Encoding used for the “genome” of an individual
strongly affects the behavior of the search
• Genetic algorithms / genetic programming are a
large and active area of research
Ma and Pa solutions
8 Queens problem
•Represent state by a
string of 8 digits in
{1..8}
•S = ‘32752411’
•Fitness function = # of
non-attacking pairs
•f(Sol) = 8*7/2 = 28
•F(S) = 24
Genetic algorithms

• Fitness function: number of non-attacking pairs of queens


(min = 0, max = (8 × 7)/2 = 28)
• 24/(24+23+20+11) = 31%
• 23/(24+23+20+11) = 29% etc
Genetic algorithms
GA pseudo-code
Ant Colony Optimization (ACO)
A probabilistic search technique for problems
reducible to finding good paths through graphs
Inspiration
•Ants leave nest
•Discover food
•Return to nest,
preferring shorter
paths
•Leave pheromone
trail
•Shortest path is
reinforced
Tabu search
• Problem: Hill climbing can get stuck on
local maxima
• Solution: Maintain a list of k previously
visited states, and prevent the search
from revisiting them
Online search
• Interleave computation & action (search some, act
some)
• Exploration: Can’t infer outcomes of actions; must
actually perform them to learn what will happen
• Competitive ratio: Path cost found/ Path cost that
would be found if the agent knew the nature of the
space, and could use offline search
*
On average, or in an adversarial scenario (worst case)
• Relatively easy if actions are reversible (ONLINE-DFS-
AGENT)
• LRTA* (Learning Real-Time A*): Update h(s) (in state
table) based on experience
• More about these in chapters on Logic and Learning!
Other topics
• Search in continuous spaces
– Different math
• Search with uncertain actions
– Must model the probabilities of an actions results
• Search with partial observations
– Acquiring knowledge as a result of search
Summary: Informed search
• Hill-climbing algorithms keep only a single state
in memory, but can get stuck on local optima.
• Simulated annealing escapes local optima, and is
complete and optimal given a “long enough”
cooling schedule.
• Genetic algorithms can search a large space by
modeling biological evolution.
• Online search algorithms are useful in state
spaces with partial/no information.

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