Module 2

Search Algorithms
Contents
Uninformed search Algorithms: Breadth-First Search,
Uniform cost search, Depth-First Search.
Informed search Algorithms: Best First Search, A*, AO*,
Hill Climbing, Generate & Test, Alpha-Beta pruning, Min-
max search.
Introduction
The aim of AI rational agent is to solve a problem without
intervention of the human.
To solve the problem:
1. There is a need to represent a problem. This representation is
called formalization.
2. Agent uses some strategies to solve the problem.
This strategy is searching technique.
Problem formulation
 This step defines the problem which will help to understand and
decide the course of action that needs to be considered to achieve
the goal.

 Every problem should be properly formulated before applying any

search algorithms, because every algorithm demands problem in
specific form.
Components of the problem:
Problem statement:
What is to be done?
Why it is important to build AI system?
What are the advantages of the proposed system?
Example: Predict whether or not the patient having diabetes or not.
Goal or solution: Can use some machine learning techniques to solve
this problem.
Solution space: Every alternative ways with which the problem can be
solved is known as solution space.
Operators: Actions taken during solving the problem.
 Examples of problem formulation
Problem Statement: Mouse is hungry,
and needs to consume cheese placed in
the environment.
Problem solution: Can use search
algorithms to find the shortest path.
Solution space: Multiple paths possible.
Operators: UP, DOWN, RIGHT and LEFT.
2. Search Strategies
Important Terminologies:
• Search: Searching is a step by step procedure to solve a search-problem
in a given search space. A search problem can have three main factors:
• Search Space: Search space represents a set of possible conditions and solutions.
• Start State: It is a state from where agent begins the search.
• Goal state: Ultimate aim of searching process.
• Search tree: A tree representation of search space, showing possible
solutions from initial state.
• Actions: It gives the description of all the available actions to the agent.
• Transition model: A description of what each action do.
• Path Cost: It is a function which assigns a numeric cost to each path.
• Solution: It is an action sequence which leads from the start node to the
goal node.
• Optimal Solution: If a solution has the lowest cost among all solutions.
 Example
• States: The state is determined by both the agent location and the dirt locations. The
agent is in one of two locations, each of which might or might not contain dirt.
• Initial state: Any state can be designated as the initial state.
• Actions: In this simple environment, each state has just three actions: Left, Right, and
Suck. Larger environments might also include Up and Down.
• Transition model: The actions have their expected effects, except that moving Left in
the leftmost square, moving Right in the rightmost square, and Sucking in a clean square
have no effect.
• Goal test: This checks whether all the
squares are clean.
• Path cost: Each step costs 1, so the path
cost is the number of steps in the path
The 8-puzzle
• States: A state description specifies the location of each of the eight tiles and the blank
in one of the nine squares.
• Initial state: Any state can be designated as the initial state. Note that any given goal
can be reached from exactly half of the possible initial states.
• Actions: The simplest formulation defines the actions as movements of the blank space
Left, Right, Up, or Down. Different subsets of these are possible depending on where
the blank is.
• Transition model: Given a state and action, this returns the resulting state; for
example,
if we apply Left to the start state in Figure 3.4, the resulting state has the 5 and the blank
switched.
• Goal test: This checks whether the state matches the goal configuration.
• Path cost: Each step costs 1, so the path cost is
the number of steps in the path.
Properties of Search Algorithms
Measuring searching performance:

Completeness: A search algorithm is said to be complete if it

guarantees to return a solution for any random input.
Optimality: best solution among all other solutions, then such a
solution for is said to be an optimal solution.
Time Complexity: Time taken for an algorithm to complete its task.
Space Complexity: It is the maximum storage space required at any
point during the search, as the complexity of the problem.
 AO* Search

Hill climbing

Generate & Test

Alpha – beta
Min-max search
pruning
Informed search algorithms
Informed search Algorithms: Best First Search, A*, AO*,
Hill Climbing, Generate & Test, Alpha-Beta pruning, Min-
max search.
 Introduction
In uninformed search algorithms, agent looks the entire search space for all possible
solutions of the problem without having any additional knowledge about search
space. Because of this it takes time to get the solution.
But informed search algorithm contains an knowledge such as how far we are from
the goal, path cost, how to reach to goal node, etc. This knowledge help agents to
explore less to the search space and find more efficiently the goal node.
Informed search algorithm uses the idea of heuristic, so it is also called Heuristic
search.
Heuristics function: Heuristic is a function which is used in Informed Search, and
it finds the most promising path. It takes the current state of the agent as its input
and produces the estimation of how close agent is from the goal. The heuristic
method, however, might not always give the best solution, but it guaranteed to find a
good solution in reasonable time. Heuristic function estimates how close a state is to
the goal.
In the informed search:
 Best First Search,
 A*,
 AO*,
 Hill Climbing,
 Generate & Test,
 Alpha-Beta pruning,
 Min-max search.
Pure Heuristic Search:
Pure heuristic search is the simplest form of heuristic search
algorithms.
It expands nodes based on their heuristic value.
It maintains two lists, OPEN and CLOSED list.
In the CLOSED list, it places those nodes which have already

expanded and
In the OPEN list, it places nodes which have yet not been
expanded.
Best-first Search Algorithm (Greedy
Search)
Greedy best-first search algorithm always selects the path which
appears best at that moment.
It is the combination of depth-first search and breadth-first search
algorithms.
It uses the heuristic function and search. Best-first search allows us
to take the advantages of both algorithms.
With the help of best-first search, at each step, we can choose the
most promising node. In the best first search algorithm, we expand
the node which is closest to the goal node and the closest cost is
estimated by heuristic function.
3)

node h(n) node h(n) node h(n)

A 11 E 4 I,J 3
B 5 F 2 S 15
C,D 9 H 7 G 0
4)
A* Search Algorithm
• A* Search Algorithm is a simple and efficient search algorithm that can be used to
find the optimal path between two nodes in a graph.

• It is used for the shortest path finding.

• It is an extension of Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm (Dijkstra’s Algorithm).

• It is the sum of two variables’ values that determines the node it picks at any point
in time.

• At each step, it picks the node with the smallest value of ‘f’ (the sum of ‘g’ and
‘h’) and processes that node/cell.
• ‘g’ is the distance it takes to get to a certain square on the grid from the starting
point, following the path we generated to get there.

• ‘h’ is the heuristic, which is the estimation of the distance it takes to get to the
finish line from that square on the grid.

• Steps:
1.Add start node to list.
2.For all the neighbouring nodes, find the least cost F node.
3.Switch to the closed list. For 8 nodes adjacent to the current node. If the node is not
reachable, ignore it. Else. ...
4.Stop working when you find the destination. It is not possible to find the destination going
through all possible points.
9)
 AO* Search Algorithm
• AO* algorithm is a best first search algorithm.

• AO* algorithm uses the concept of AND-OR

graphs to decompose any complex problem
given into smaller set of problems which are
further solved.

• AND-OR graphs are specialized graphs that are

used in problems that can be broken down into
sub problems where AND side of the graph
represent a set of task that need to be done to
achieve the main goal, whereas the OR side of
the graph represent the different ways of
performing task to achieve the same main goal.
Working of AO algorithm:
The AO* algorithm works on the formula given below :
f(n) = g(n) + h(n)
where,
•g(n): The actual cost of traversal from initial state to the current state.
•h(n): The estimated cost of traversal from the current state to the goal state.
•f(n): The actual cost of traversal from the initial state to the goal state.
Hill Climbing Algorithm

• Hill climbing algorithm is a local search algorithm which continuously

moves in the direction of increasing elevation/value to find the peak of
the mountain or best solution to the problem.
• It terminates when it reaches a peak value where no neighbor has a
higher value.
• It is also called greedy local search as it only looks to its good
immediate neighbor state and not beyond that.
• A node of hill climbing algorithm has two components which are state
and value.
• In this algorithm, we don't need to maintain and handle the search tree
or graph as it only keeps a single current state.
Features of Hill Climbing:
• Generate and Test variant: Hill Climbing is the variant of Generate
and Test method. The Generate and Test method produce feedback
which helps to decide which direction to move in the search space.
• Greedy approach: Hill-climbing algorithm search moves in the
direction which optimizes the cost.
• No backtracking: It does not backtrack the search space, as it does
not remember the previous states.
State-space Diagram for Hill Climbing:

• The state-space landscape is a graphical representation of the hill-

climbing algorithm which is showing a graph between various states
of algorithm and Objective function/Cost.
• On Y-axis we have taken the function which can be an objective
function or cost function, and state-space on the x-axis.
• If the function on Y-axis is cost then, the goal of search is to find the
global minimum and local minimum.
• If the function of Y-axis is Objective function, then the goal of the
search is to find the global maximum and local maximum.
Different regions:
• Local Maximum: Local maximum is a state
which is better than its neighbor states, but
there is also another state which is higher
than it.
• Global Maximum: Global maximum is the
best possible state of state space landscape. It
has the highest value of objective function.
• Current state: It is a state in a landscape
diagram where an agent is currently present.
• Flat local maximum: It is a flat space in the
landscape where all the neighbor states of
current states have the same value.
• Shoulder: It is a plateau region which has an
uphill edge.
Problems in Hill Climbing Algorithm:
• 1. Local Maximum: A local maximum is a peak
state in the landscape which is better than each of
its neighboring states, but there is another state also
present which is higher than the local maximum.
• 2. Plateau: A plateau is the flat area of the search
space in which all the neighbor states of the current
state contains the same value, because of this
algorithm does not find any best direction to move.
A hill-climbing search might be lost in the plateau
area.
• 3. Ridges: A ridge is a special form of the local
maximum. It has an area which is higher than its
surrounding areas, but itself has a slope, and cannot
be reached in a single move.
Generate and Test Search Algorithm
• Generate and Test Search is a heuristic search technique based on
Depth First Search with Backtracking which guarantees to find a
solution if done systematically and there exists a solution.
• In this technique, all the solutions are generated and tested for the best
solution.
• It ensures that the best solution is checked against all possible
generated solutions.
• The evaluation is carried out by the heuristic function.
 Algorithm steps:

1.Generate a possible solution. For

example, generating a particular point in
the problem space or generating a path
for a start state.
2.Test to see if this is a actual solution by
comparing the chosen point or the
endpoint of the chosen path to the set of
acceptable goal states
3.If a solution is found, quit. Otherwise go
to Step 1.
Properties of Good Generators:
• The good generators need to have the following properties:
 Complete: Good Generators need to be complete i.e. they should
generate all the possible solutions and cover all the possible states. In this
way, we can guaranty our algorithm to converge to the correct solution at
some point in time.
 Non Redundant: Good Generators should not yield a duplicate solution
at any point of time as it reduces the efficiency of algorithm thereby
increasing the time of search and making the time complexity exponential.
 Informed: Good Generators have the knowledge about the search space
which they maintain in the form of an array of knowledge. This can be
used to search how far the agent is from the goal, calculate the path cost
and even find a way to reach the goal.
Mini-Max Algorithm
• Mini-max algorithm is a recursive or backtracking algorithm which is used in
decision-making and game theory. It provides an optimal move for the player
assuming that opponent is also playing optimally.
• Min-Max algorithm is mostly used for game playing in AI such as Chess,
Checkers, tic-tac-toe, go, and various tow-players game. This Algorithm
computes the minimax decision for the current state.
• In this algorithm two players play the game, one is called MAX and other is
called MIN.
• Both the players fight it as the opponent player gets the minimum benefit while
they get the maximum benefit.
• Both Players of the game are opponent of each other, where MAX will select
the maximized value and MIN will select the minimized value.
• The minimax algorithm performs a depth-first search algorithm for the
exploration of the complete game tree.
• The minimax algorithm proceeds all the way down to the terminal node of the
• The steps for the mini max algorithm can be stated as follows:
1.Create the entire game tree.
2.Evaluate the scores for the leaf nodes based on the evaluation
function.
3.Backtrack from the leaf to the root nodes:
• For Maximizer, choose the node with the maximum score.
• For Minimizer, choose the node with the minimum score.
4.At the root node, choose the node with the maximum value and select
the respective move.
Alpha-Beta Pruning
• Alpha-beta pruning is a modified version of the minimax algorithm.
• It is an optimization technique for the minimax algorithm.
• This is a technique by which without checking each node of the game
tree we can compute the correct minimax decision, and this technique
is called pruning.
• This involves two threshold parameter Alpha and beta for future
expansion, so it is called alpha-beta pruning. It is also called
as Alpha-Beta Algorithm.
• Alpha-beta pruning can be applied at any depth of a tree, and
sometimes it not only prune the tree leaves but also entire sub-tree.
• The condition which is required for alpha-beta pruning is: α>=β.
• The two-parameter can be defined as:
 Alpha: The best (highest-value) choice we have found so far at any point
along the path of Maximizer. The initial value of alpha is -∞.
 Beta: The best (lowest-value) choice we have found so far at any point along
the path of Minimizer. The initial value of beta is +∞.
• The Alpha-beta pruning returns the same move as the standard
minimax algorithm does, but it removes all the nodes which are not
really affecting the final decision but making algorithm slow. Hence
by pruning these nodes, it makes the algorithm fast.
Thank you