 Problem formulation

 Defining the problem

 Production System
 Control strategies
 Understanding A state space search with
water jug problem

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 Problem formulation
 There are 4 steps
 Define the problem precisely.
The definition must comprise of precise specification of the
initial situations as well the final situation with acceptable
solution to the problem
 Analyze the problem
 Isolate and represent the task knowledge which
is required to solve the problem
 Choose the best problem solving technique and
apply it
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 Well-defined problems and
solutions
 The initial state that the agent starts in
 A description of the possible action
available to the agent.
 A description of what each action does?
 The goal test, which determines whether a
given state is a goal state
 A path cost function that assigns a numeric
cost to each path
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 Defining the problem
 Done with state space search
 Example
 Chess game
 Water jug problem

 8-Puzzle Problem

 8-Queens Problem

 Tower of Hanoi Problem

 Traveling Salesperson Problem

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 Chess game
 Defining game
 Initial state
 goal state (many states possible)
 Legal moves
 Practical difficulty
 It is estimated there are between 10111 and 10123 positions
 No person could ever supply a complete set of such rules
 No program could easily handle all those rules

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 Defining Water jug problem
 A water jug problem: 4-gallon and 3-gallon

4 3
 no marker on the bottle
 pump to fill the water into the jug
 How can you get exactly 2 gallons of water
into the 4-gallons jug?

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 Production System
 Production system or production rule system is a
computer program typically used to provide some form
of artificial intelligence,
 Which consists primarily of a set of rules about behavior
 But, it also includes the mechanism necessary to follow
those rules as the system responds to states of the
world.

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 Production System Rules
Production System rules can be classified as:
Deductive Inference Rules
 You can represent the knowledge in a production system as
a set of rules along with a control system and database. It
can be written as:
 If(Condition) Then (Condition)
 The production rules are also known as condition-action,
antecedent-consequent, pattern-action, situation-response,
feedback-result pairs.

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  For example, math is deductive:
If x = 4
And if y = 1
Then 2x + y = 9

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  Abductive Inference Rules
 Abductive reasoning typically begins with an incomplete
set of observations and proceeds to the likeliest possible
explanation for the set.
 Medical diagnosis is an application of abductive
reasoning: given this set of symptoms, what is the
diagnosis that would best explain most of them?

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 Classes or types of Production System
There are four major classes of Production System in Artificial
Intelligence:
Monotonic Production System: It’s a production system in
which the application of a rule never prevents the later
application of another rule, that could have also been applied
at the time the first rule was selected.
Partially Commutative Production System: It’s a type of
production system in which the application of a sequence of
rules transforms state X into state Y, then any permutation of
those rules that is allowable also transforms state X into state Y.
Theorem proving falls under the monotonic partially
communicative system.

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  Non-Monotonic Production Systems: These are
useful for solving ignorable problems. These systems
are important from an implementation standpoint
because they can be implemented without the ability to
backtrack to previous states when it is discovered that
an incorrect path was followed.
 Commutative Systems: These are usually useful for
problems in which changes occur but can be
reversed and in which the order of operation is not
critical. Production systems that are not usually not
partially commutative are useful for many problems in
which irreversible changes occur, such as chemical
analysis.

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 Control strategies
 Helps us decide which rule to apply next
 What to do when there are more than 1
matching rules?
 Good control strategy should
 Cause motion
 Systematic

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 Search strategies
 Uninformed search  Informed search
 Breadth-first search  Greedy best-first search
 Depth-first search 
A* Search: Minimizing
 Depth-limited search the total estimated
 Iterative deepening solution cost
depth-first search  Memory-bounded
 Bidirectional search heuristic search

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 A state space search
j1 and j2 are 2 jugs
(x,y) : order pair
x : max. water in j1 is 4-gallons x=4
y : max. water in j2 is 3-gallons y=3
start state : (0,0)
goal state : (2,0)
Rules : 1. Fill the 4 gallon-jug (4,-)
2. Fill the 3 gallon-jug (-,3)
3. Empty the 4 gallon-jug (0,-)
4. Empty the 3 gallon-jug (-,0)
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 Water jug rules
1 ( j1, j2 ) Fill the 4-gallon jug j1 = x
2 ( j1, j2 ) Fill the 3-gallon jug j2 = y
3 ( j1, j2 ) Empty the 4-gallon jug on the ground j1 = 0
4 ( j1, j2 ) Empty the 3-gallon jug on the ground j2 = 0

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Water jug rules

5 ( j1, j2 ) Pour water from the 4-gallon jug t = y - j2

into the 3-gallon jug until the j2 = y
3-gallon jug is full j1 - = t
6 ( j1, j2 ) Pour water from the 3-gallon jug t = x - j1
into the 4-gallon jug until the j1 = x
4-gallon jug is full j2 - = t
7 ( j1, j2 ) Pour all water from 4-gallon jug j2 + = j1
into the 3-gallon jug, until 4-gallon j1 = 0
jug becomes empty
8 ( j1, j2 ) Pour all water from the 3-gallon jug j1 + = j2
into the 4-gallon jug, until 3-gallon j2 = 0
jug becomes empty

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 A water jug solution
4-Gallon Jug 3-Gallon Jug Rule Applied
0 0
0 3 2
3 0 8
3 3 2
4 2 6
0 2 3
2 0 8

Solution : path / plan

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 Formal description of a problem

1. Define a state space that contains all the

possible configurations of the relevant
objects.
2. Specify state/states that describes the
situation of start state.
3. Specify state/states that describes the
situation of goal state.
4. Specify the set of rules.
 assumption, generalization

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 Search Tree

Water jug problem.

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