Brute Force

A straightforward approach, usually based directly on the

problem’s statement and definitions of the concepts involved

Examples:
1. Computing an (a > 0, n a nonnegative integer)

2. Computing n!

3. Multiplying two matrices

4. Searching for a key of a given value in a list – Sequential search

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Brute-Force Sorting Algorithm
Selection Sort Scan the array to find its smallest element and
swap it with the first element. Then, starting with the second
element, scan the elements to the right of it to find the
smallest among them and swap it with the second elements.
Generally, on pass i (0  i  n-2), find the smallest element in
A[i..n-1] and swap it with A[i]:

A[0]  . . .  A[i-1] | A[i], . . . , A[min], . . ., A[n-1]

in their final positions

Example: 7 3 2 5

A. Levitin “Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms,” 3rd ed., Ch. 3 ©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.

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Analysis of Selection Sort

Time efficiency:

Space efficiency:

Stability:
A. Levitin “Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms,” 3rd ed., Ch. 3 ©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.

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 Brute-Force String Matching
 pattern: a string of m characters to search for
 text: a (longer) string of n characters to search in
 problem: find a substring in the text that matches the pattern

Brute-force algorithm
Step 1 Align pattern at beginning of text
Step 2 Moving from left to right, compare each character of
pattern to the corresponding character in text until
– all characters are found to match (successful search); or
– a mismatch is detected
Step 3 While pattern is not found and the text is not yet
exhausted, realign pattern one position to the right and
repeat Step 2
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Examples of Brute-Force String Matching

Pattern: 001011
Text: 10010101101001100101111010

Pattern: happy
Text: It is never too late to have a happy childhood.

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Pseudocode and Efficiency

Efficiency:
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Brute-Force Polynomial Evaluation
Problem: Find the value of polynomial
p(x) = anxn + an-1xn-1 +… + a1x1 + a0
at a point x = x0

Brute-force algorithm
p  0.0
for i  n downto 0 do
power  1
for j  1 to i do //compute xi
power  power  x
p  p + a[i]  power
return p

Efficiency:
A. Levitin “Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms,” 3rd ed., Ch. 3 ©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.

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Polynomial Evaluation: Improvement

We can do better by evaluating from right to left:

Better brute-force algorithm

p  a[0]
power  1
for i  1 to n do
power  power  x
p  p + a[i]  power
return p

Efficiency:

A. Levitin “Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms,” 3rd ed., Ch. 3 ©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.

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Closest-Pair Problem

Find the two closest points in a set of n points (in the two-
dimensional Cartesian plane).

Brute-force algorithm
Compute the distance between every pair of distinct points
and return the indexes of the points for which the distance
is the smallest.

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Closest-Pair Brute-Force Algorithm (cont.)

Efficiency:

How to make it faster?

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Brute-Force Strengths and Weaknesses
 Strengths
• wide applicability
• simplicity
• yields reasonable algorithms for some important
problems
(e.g., matrix multiplication, sorting, searching, string
matching)

 Weaknesses
• rarely yields efficient algorithms
• some brute-force algorithms are unacceptably slow
• not as constructive as some other design techniques

A. Levitin “Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms,” 3rd ed., Ch. 3 ©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.

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Exhaustive Search
A brute force solution to a problem involving search for an
element with a special property, usually among
combinatorial objects such as permutations, combinations, or
subsets of a set.

Method:
• generate a list of all potential solutions to the problem in a
systematic manner (see algorithms in Sec. 5.4)

• evaluate potential solutions one by one, disqualifying

infeasible ones and, for an optimization problem, keeping
track of the best one found so far

• when search ends, announce the solution(s) found

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Example 1: Traveling Salesman Problem
 Given n cities with known distances between each pair, find
the shortest tour that passes through all the cities exactly
once before returning to the starting city
 Alternatively: Find shortest Hamiltonian circuit in a
weighted connected graph
 Example:
2
a b
5 3
8 4

c 7 d

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TSP by Exhaustive Search
Tour Cost
a→b→c→d→a 2+3+7+5 = 17
a→b→d→c→a 2+4+7+8 = 21
a→c→b→d→a 8+3+4+5 = 20
a→c→d→b→a 8+7+4+2 = 21
a→d→b→c→a 5+4+3+8 = 20
a→d→c→b→a 5+7+3+2 = 17

More tours?

Less tours?

Efficiency:
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Example 2: Knapsack Problem
Given n items:
• weights: w1 w2 … wn
• values: v1 v2 … vn
• a knapsack of capacity W
Find most valuable subset of the items that fit into the knapsack

Example: Knapsack capacity W=16

item weight value
1 2 $20
2 5 $30
3 10 $50
4 5 $10
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Knapsack Problem by Exhaustive Search
Subset Total weight Total value
{1} 2 $20
{2} 5 $30
{3} 10 $50
{4} 5 $10
{1,2} 7 $50
{1,3} 12 $70
{1,4} 7 $30
{2,3} 15 $80
{2,4} 10 $40
{3,4} 15 $60
{1,2,3} 17 not feasible
{1,2,4} 12 $60
{1,3,4} 17 not feasible
{2,3,4} 20 not feasible
{1,2,3,4} 22 not feasible Efficiency:
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Example 3: The Assignment Problem
There are n people who need to be assigned to n jobs, one
person per job. The cost of assigning person i to job j is C[i,j].
Find an assignment that minimizes the total cost.

Job 0 Job 1 Job 2 Job 3

Person 0 9 2 7 8
Person 1 6 4 3 7
Person 2 5 8 1 8
Person 3 7 6 9 4

Algorithmic Plan: Generate all legitimate assignments, compute

their costs, and select the cheapest one.
How many assignments are there?
Pose the problem as the one about a cost matrix:
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Assignment Problem by Exhaustive Search
9 2 7 8
6 4 3 7
C=
5 8 1 8
7 6 9 4

Assignment (col.#s) Total Cost

1, 2, 3, 4 9+4+1+4=18
1, 2, 4, 3 9+4+8+9=30
1, 3, 2, 4 9+3+8+4=24
1, 3, 4, 2 9+3+8+6=26
1, 4, 2, 3 9+7+8+9=33
1, 4, 3, 2 9+7+1+6=23
etc.
(For this particular instance, the optimal assignment can be found by
exploiting the specific
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to the Design & Analysis ofCh.the
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Final Comments on Exhaustive Search
 Exhaustive-search algorithms run in a realistic amount of
time only on very small instances

 In some cases, there are much better alternatives!

• Euler circuits
• shortest paths
• minimum spanning tree
• assignment problem

 In many cases, exhaustive search or its variation is the only

known way to get exact solution
A. Levitin “Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms,” 3rd ed., Ch. 3 ©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.

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Graph Traversal Algorithms

Many problems require processing all graph vertices (and

edges) in systematic fashion

Graph traversal algorithms:

• Depth-first search (DFS)

• Breadth-first search (BFS)

A. Levitin “Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms,” 3rd ed., Ch. 3 ©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.

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Depth-First Search (DFS)
 Visits graph’s vertices by always moving away from last
visited vertex to unvisited one, backtracks if no adjacent
unvisited vertex is available.

 Uses a stack
• a vertex is pushed onto the stack when it’s reached for the
first time
• a vertex is popped off the stack when it becomes a dead
end, i.e., when there is no adjacent unvisited vertex

 “Redraws” graph in tree-like fashion (with tree edges and

back edges for undirected graph)
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Pseudocode of DFS

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Example: DFS traversal of undirected graph

a b c d

e f g h

DFS traversal stack: DFS tree:

A. Levitin “Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms,” 3rd ed., Ch. 3 ©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.

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Notes on DFS
 DFS can be implemented with graphs represented as:
• adjacency matrices: Θ(V2)
• adjacency lists: Θ(|V|+|E|)

 Yields two distinct ordering of vertices:

• order in which vertices are first encountered (pushed onto stack)
• order in which vertices become dead-ends (popped off stack)

 Applications:
• checking connectivity, finding connected components
• checking acyclicity
• finding articulation points and biconnected components
• searching state-space of problems for solution (AI)
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Breadth-first search (BFS)
 Visits graph vertices by moving across to all the neighbors
of last visited vertex

 Instead of a stack, BFS uses a queue

 Similar to level-by-level tree traversal

 “Redraws” graph in tree-like fashion (with tree edges and

cross edges for undirected graph)

A. Levitin “Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms,” 3rd ed., Ch. 3 ©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.

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Pseudocode of BFS

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Example of BFS traversal of undirected graph

a b c d

e f g h

BFS traversal queue: BFS tree:

A. Levitin “Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms,” 3rd ed., Ch. 3 ©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.

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Notes on BFS
 BFS has same efficiency as DFS and can be implemented
with graphs represented as:
• adjacency matrices: Θ(V2)
• adjacency lists: Θ(|V|+|E|)

 Yields single ordering of vertices (order added/deleted from

queue is the same)

 Applications: same as DFS, but can also find paths from a

vertex to all other vertices with the smallest number of
edges

A. Levitin “Introduction to the Design & Analysis of Algorithms,” 3rd ed., Ch. 3 ©2012 Pearson Education, Inc. Upper Saddle River, NJ. All Rights Reserved.

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