INFORMED (HEURISTIC)

SEARCH STRATEGIES
Course Title: Artificial Intelligence and Expert System
Course Code: CSC4226

Dept. of Computer Science

Faculty of Science and Technology

Lecture No: Four (4) Week No: Four (4) Semester:

Lecturer: Dr. Abdus Salam [email protected]
LECTURE OUTLINE

1. BEST-FIRST SEARCH

2. GREEDY BEST-FIRST SEARCH

3. A* SEARCH

4. CONDITIONS FOR OPTIMALITY

5. OPTIMALITY OF A*
INFORMED SEARCH STRATEGY

Informed search strategy—

one that uses problem-specific knowledge beyond the definition of the

problem itself

can find solutions more efficiently than can an uninformed strategy.

problem-specific knowledge is the extra bit of information the program uses

rather than the problem formulation, thus known as Informed Search
 BEST-FIRST SEARCH

• The general approach to informed search is called best-first search

• Best-first search is an instance of the general TREE-SEARCH or GRAPH-SEARCH algorithm
in which a node is selected for expansion based on an evaluation function, f(n).
• The evaluation function is construed as a cost estimate, so the node with the
lowest evaluation is expanded first

• The implementation of best-first graph search is identical to that for uniform-

cost search, except for the use of f instead of g to order the priority queue.

• The choice of f determines the search strategy.

HEURISTIC SEARCH COMPARED
WITH BLIND SEARCH
 HEURISTIC FUNCTION
• The choice of f(evaluation function) determines the search strategy
• Best-first algorithms include as a component of f a heuristic function, denoted
h(n)
• h(n) = estimated cost of the cheapest path from the state at node n to a goal
state.
• h(n) takes a node as input, but, unlike g(n), it depends only on the state at that
node.
• Heuristic functions are the most common form in which additional knowledge of
the problem is imparted to the search algorithm
• Consider them to be arbitrary, nonnegative, problem-specific functions, with one
constraint: if n is a goal node, then h(n)=0.
 HEURISTIC FUNCTION

First three levels of the tic-tac-toe

state space reduced by symmetry
HEURISTIC FUNCTION

The “most wins” heuristic applied to the first children in tic-tac-toe.

HEURISTIC FUNCTION

Heuristically reduced state

space for tic-tac-toe
 GREEDY BEST-FIRST
SEARCH
• Greedy best-first search tries to expand the node that is
closest to the goal, on the grounds that this is likely to lead to a
solution quickly.

• Thus, it evaluates nodes by using just the heuristic function;

that is, f(n) = h(n).

• “greedy”—at each step it tries to get as close to the goal as it

can.
• Its search cost is minimal. It is not optimal.

• Greedy best-first tree search is also incomplete even in a finite

state space, much like depth-first search.
STRAIGHT-LINE DISTANCE
HEURISTIC
GREEDY BEST-FIRST
TREE SEARCH
GREEDY BEST-FIRST
TREE SEARCH
 A* SEARCH:
MINIMIZING THE TOTAL ESTIMATED SOLUTION COST
The most widely known form of best-first search is called A*search
It evaluates nodes by combining
g(n), the cost to reach the node, and
h(n), the cost to get from the node to the goal:
f(n) = g(n) + h(n) .
Since
g(n) gives the path cost from the start node to node n, and
h(n) is the estimated cost of the cheapest path from n to the goal,
we have f(n) = estimated cost of the cheapest solution through n .
A∗ search is both complete and optimal.

The algorithm is identical to UNIFORM-COST-SEARCH except that

A∗ uses g + h instead of g.
A∗ SEARCH FOR
BUCHAREST
A∗ SEARCH FOR
BUCHAREST
A∗ SEARCH FOR
BUCHAREST
 CONDITIONS FOR OPTIMALITY:
ADMISSIBILITY AND CONSISTENCY
• The first condition we require for optimality is that h(n) be an
admissible heuristic
• An admissible heuristic is one that never overestimates the cost to
reach the goal
• Because g(n) is the actual cost to reach n along the current path,
and f(n)=g(n) + h(n), we have as an immediate consequence that
f(n) never overestimates the true cost of a solution along the
current path through n.
• Admissible heuristics are by nature optimistic because they think
the cost of solving the problem is less than it actually is.
ADMISSIBILITY
 CONSISTENCY
• A second, slightly stronger condition called consistency (or
sometimes monotonicity) is required only for applications of A∗
to graph search.
• A heuristic h(n) is consistent if, for every node n and every
successor n’ of n generated by any action a, the estimated cost of
reaching the goal from n is no greater than the step cost of getting
to n’ plus the estimated cost of reaching the goal from n’ :
h(n) ≤ c(n, a, n’) + h(n’).
• This is a form of the general triangle inequality, which stipulates
that each side of a triangle cannot be longer than the sum of the
other two sides
 OPTIMALITY OF A*
A∗ has the following properties: the tree-search version of A∗ is optimal if h(n) is
admissible, while the graph-search version is optimal if h(n) is consistent.

if h(n) is consistent, then the values of f(n) along any path are nondecreasing.
The proof follows directly from the definition of consistency. Suppose n is a
successor of n; then g(n’)=g(n) + c(n, a, n’) for some action a, and we have
f(n’) = g(n’) + h(n’)
= g(n) + c(n, a, n’) + h(n’) because g(n’) = g(n) + c(n, a, n’)
≥ g(n) + h(n) because c(n, a, n’) + h(n’) >= h(n)
= f(n)
So, f(n’) >= f(n)
OPTIMALITY OF A*

The next step is to prove that whenever A∗ selects a node n for

expansion, the optimal path to that node has been found. Were
this not the case, there would have to be another frontier node n’
on the optimal path from the start node to n; because f is
nondecreasing along any path, n’ would have lower f-cost than n
and would have been selected first.
Local search algorithms

 In many optimization problems, the path to the goal

is irrelevant; the goal state itself is the solution
 State space = set of "complete" configurations
 Find configuration satisfying constraints, e.g., n-
queens
 In such cases, we can use local search algorithms
 keep a single "current" state, try to improve it
Hill-climbing search

 "Like climbing Everest in thick fog with amnesia"

Example of hill-climbing
Neighbor solutions 3 start state (solution)

6 4 These numbers measure

2 value, not path length

7 12goal (this might not

4 5
be reached)
goal
8 1
0 8
 Hill-climbing search
 Problem: depending on initial state, can get stuck in local maxima
Hill-climbing search
 Local maximum problem
Hill-climbing search
 Ridge: Result in a sequence of local maxima that is very difficult
for a greedy algorithms to navigate.
 Ridge: then jump a little bit.
Hill-climbing search
 Plateau: The evaluation function is flat. It can be a flat local
maximum, from which no uphill exit exists or a shoulder, from
which it is possible to make progress.
 Plateau: may be side way move. However, may not be a soln
when no uphill exists. So need some limitation of steeping
sideway.
References

1. Chapter 3: Solving Problem by Searching , Pages 92-97

“Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach,” by Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig,
 Books

1. “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach,” by Stuart J. Russell and Peter Norvig.

2. "Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving", by
George F. Luger, (2002)
3. "Artificial Intelligence: Theory and Practice", by Thomas Dean.
4. "AI: A New Synthesis", by Nils J. Nilsson.
5. “Programming for machine learning,” by J. Ross Quinlan,
6. “Neural Computing Theory and Practice,” by Philip D. Wasserman, .
7. “Neural Network Design,” by Martin T. Hagan, Howard B. Demuth, Mark H.
Beale, .
8. “Practical Genetic Algorithms,” by Randy L. Haupt and Sue Ellen Haupt.
9. “Genetic Algorithms in Search, optimization and Machine learning,” by David E.
Goldberg.
10."Computational Intelligence: A Logical Approach", by David Poole, Alan
Mackworth, and Randy Goebel.
11.“Introduction to Turbo Prolog”, by Carl Townsend.