Problems, Problem Spaces

and Search

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 Contents
• Defining the problem as a State Space Search
• Production Systems
• Control Strategies
• Breadth First Search
• Depth First Search
• Heuristic Search
• Problem Characteristics
• Is the Problem Decomposable?
• Can Solution Steps be ignored or undone?
• Production system characteristics
• Issues in the design of search programs
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 To build a system to solve a
problem
1. Define the problem precisely
2. Analyse the problem
3. Isolate and represent the task
knowledge that is necessary to solve
the problem
4. Choose the best problem-solving
techniques and apply it to the
particular problem.

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 Defining the problem as State
Space Search
• The state space representation forms the basis of
most of the AI methods.
• Its structure corresponds to the structure of
problem solving in two important ways:
 It allows for a formal definition of a problem as the need
to convert some given situation into some desired
situation using a set of permissible operations.
 It permits us to define the process of solving a
particular problem as a combination of known
techniques (each represented as a rule defining a single
step in the space) and search, the general technique of
exploring the space to try to find some path from
current state to a goal state.
 Search is a very important process in the solution of hard
problems for which no more direct techniques are available.

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 Example: Playing Chess
• To build a program that could “play
chess”, we could first have to specify the
starting position of the chess board, the
rules that define the legal moves, and the
board positions that represent a win for
one side or the other.
• In addition, we must make explicit the
previously implicit goal of not only playing
the legal game of chess but also winning
the game, if possible,
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 Playing chess
• The starting position can be described as an 8 by 8 array where
each position contains a symbol for appropriate piece.
– We can define as our goal the check mate position.
• The legal moves provide the way of getting from initial state to
a goal state.
• They can be described easily as a set of rules consisting of two
parts:
– A left side that serves as a pattern to be matched against
the current board position.
– And a right side that describes the change to be made to
reflect the move
• However, this approach leads to large number of rules 10 120
board positions !!
• Using so many rules poses problems such as:
– No person could ever supply a complete set of such rules.
– No program could easily handle all those rules. Just storing
so many rules poses serious difficulties.

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 Defining chess problem as
State Space search
• We need to write the rules describing the
legal moves in as general a way as possible.
• For example:
– White pawn at Square( file e, rank 2) AND
Square( File e, rank 3) is empty AND Square(file
e, rank 4) is empty, then move the pawn from
Square( file e, rank 2) to Square( file e, rank 4).
• In general, the more succintly we can
describe the rules we need, the less work
we will have to do to provide them and
more efficient the program.

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 Water Jug Problem
• The state space for this problem can
be described as
the set of ordered pairs of integers (x,y)
such that x = 0, 1,2, 3 or 4 and y =
0,1,2 or 3; x represents the number of
gallons of water in the 4-gallon jug and y
represents the quantity of water in 3-
gallon jug
The start state is (0,0)
The goal state is (2,n)
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 Production rules for Water Jug
Problem
• The operators to be used to solve the problem can be described as
follows:

Sl No Current state Next State Descritpion

1 (x,y) if x < 4 (4,y) Fill the 4 gallon jug

2 (x,y) if y <3 (x,3) Fill the 3 gallon jug

3 (x,y) if x > 0 (x-d, y) Pour some water out of the 4

gallon jug

4 (x,y) if y > 0 (x, y-d) Pour some water out of the 3-

gallon jug

5 (x,y) if x>0 (0, y) Empty the 4 gallon jug

6 (x,y) if y >0 (x,0) Empty the 3 gallon jug on the

ground

7 (x,y) if x+y >= 4 and y >0 (4, y-(4-x)) Pour water from the 3 –
gallon jug into the 4 –gallon
jug until the 4-gallon jug is full

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 Production rules
8 (x, y) if x+y >= 3 and x>0 (x-(3-y), 3)
9 (x, y) if x+y <=4 and y>0 (x+y, 0)
Pour water from the 4-gallon jug
into the 3-gallon jug until the 3-
gallon jug is full
Pour all the water from the 3-
gallon jug into the 4-gallon jug

10 (x, y) if x+y <= 3 and x>0 (0, x+y) Pour all the water from the 4-
gallon jug into the 3-gallon jug

11 (0,2) (2,0) Pour the 2 gallons from 3-gallon

jug into the 4-gallon jug

12 (2,y) (0,y) Empty the 2 gallons in the 4-

gallon jug on the ground

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 To solve the water jug
problem
• Required a control structure
Gallons in the Gallons in the Rule applied
that loops through a simple
4-gallon jug 3-gallon jug
cycle in which some rule whose
left side matches the current 0 0 2
state is chosen, the appropriate
change to the state is made as 0 3 9
described in the corresponding
right side, and the resulting 3 0 2
state is checked to see if it
corresponds to goal state. 3 3 7

• One solution to the water jug 4 2 5 or 12

problem
• Shortest such sequence will 0 2 9 0r 11
have a impact on the choice of
appropriate mechanism to 2 0
guide the search for solution.

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 Formal Description of the
problem
1. Define a state space that contains all the
possible configurations of the relevant
objects.
2. Specify one or more states within that
space that describe possible situations
from which the problem solving process
may start ( initial state)
3. Specify one or more states that would be
acceptable as solutions to the problem.
( goal states)
4. Specify a set of rules that describe the
actions ( operations) available.
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 Production Systems
A production system consists of:
• A set of rules, each consisting of a left side that determines
the applicability of the rule and a right side that describes
the operation to be performed if that rule is applied.

• One or more knowledge/databases that contain whatever

information is appropriate for the particular task. Some
parts of the database may be permanent, while other parts
of it may pertain only to the solution of the current problem.

• A control strategy that specifies the order in which the rules

will be compared to the database and a way of resolving the
conflicts that arise when several rules match at once.

• A rule applier.

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 Production system
In order to solve a problem:
• We must first reduce it to one for which a
precise statement can be given. This can be
done by defining the problem’s state space (
start and goal states) and a set of operators
for moving in that space.

• The problem can then be solved by

searching for a path through the space from
an initial state to a goal state.

• The process of solving the problem can

usefully be modeled as a production system.
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 Control Strategies
• How to decide which rule to apply
next during the process of searching
for a solution to a problem?
• The two requirements of good
control strategy are that
– it should cause motion.
– It should be systematic

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 Breadth First Search
• Algorithm:
1. Create a variable called NODE-LIST and set it
to initial state
2. Until a goal state is found or NODE-LIST is
empty do
a. Remove the first element from NODE-LIST and call it
E. If NODE-LIST was empty, quit
b. For each way that each rule can match the state
described in E do:
i. Apply the rule to generate a new state
ii. If the new state is a goal state, quit and return this state
iii. Otherwise, add the new state to the end of NODE-LIST

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BFS Tree for Water Jug problem

(0,0)

(4,0) (0,3)

(0,0) (1,3) (4,3) (0,0) (3,0)

(4,3)

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 Algorithm: Depth First
Search
1. If the initial state is a goal state, quit
and return success
2. Otherwise, do the following until
success or failure is signaled:
a. Generate a successor, E, of initial state. If
there are no more successors, signal
failure.
b. Call Depth-First Search, with E as the initial
state
c. If success is returned, signal success.
Otherwise continue in this loop.
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 Backtracking
• In this search, we pursue a singal branch of the
tree until it yields a solution or until a decision to
terminate the path is made.
• It makes sense to terminate a path if it reaches
dead-end, produces a previous state. In such a
state backtracking occurs
• Chronological Backtracking: Order in which steps
are undone depends only on the temporal
sequence in which steps were initially made.
• Specifically most recent step is always the first to
be undone.
• This is also simple backtracking.

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 Advantages of Depth-First
Search
• DFS requires less memory since only
the nodes on the current path are
stored.
• By chance, DFS may find a solution
without examining much of the
search space at all.

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 Advantages of BFS
• BFS will not get trapped exploring a
blind alley.
• If there is a solution, BFS is
guaranteed to find it.
• If there are multiple solutions, then a
minimal solution will be found.

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•
TSP
Travelling Salesman Problem (TSP): Given a set of cities and
distance between every pair of cities, the problem is to find the
shortest possible route that visits every city exactly once and
returns to the starting point.

• A simple motion causing and systematic control structure could

solve this problem.

• Simply explore all possible paths in the tree and return the
shortest path.

• If there are N cities, then number of different paths among them

is 1.2….(N-1) or (N-1)!

• The time to examine single path is proportional to N

• So the total time required to perform this search is proportional

to N!
– For 10 cities, 10! = 3,628,800
• This phenomenon is called Combinatorial explosion.
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 Branch and Bound
• Begin generating complete paths, keeping
track of the shortest path found so far.
• Give up exploring any path as soon as its
partial length becomes greater than the
shortest path found so far.
• Using this algorithm, we are guaranteed to
find the shortest path.
• It still requires exponential time.
• The time it saves depends on the order in
which paths are explored.

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 Heuristic Search
• A Heuristic is a technique that improves the efficiency of a
search process, possibly by sacrificing claims of
completeness.
• Heuristics are like tour guides.
• They are good to the extent that they point in generally
interesting directions;
• They are bad to the extent that they may miss points of
interest to particular individuals.
• On the average they improve the quality of the paths that
are explored.
• Using Heuristics, we can hope to get good ( though possibly
no optimal ) solutions to hard problems such asa TSP in non
exponential time.
• There are good general purpose heuristics that are useful in
a wide variety of problem domains.
• Special purpose heuristics exploit domain specific
knowledge

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Nearest Neighbour Heuristic
• It works by selecting locally superior alternative at
each step.
• Applying to TSP:
1. Arbitrarily select a starting city
2. To select the next city, look at all cities not yet visited and
select the one closest to the current city. Go to next step.
3. Repeat step 2 until all cities have been visited.

– This procedure executes in time proportional to N2

– It is possible to prove an upper bound on the error

it incurs. This provides reassurance that one is not
paying too high a price in accuracy for speed.

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 Heuristic Function
• This is a function that maps from problem state
descriptions to measures of desirsability, usually
represented as numbers.
– Which aspects of the problem state are considered,
– how those aspects are evaluated, and
– the weights given to individual aspects are chosen in such a
way that
• the value of the heuristic function at a given node in
the search process gives as good an estimate as
possible of whether that node is on the desired path
to a solution.
• Well designed heuristic functions can play an
important part in efficiently guiding a search process
toward a solution.
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 Example Simple Heuristic
functions
• Chess : The material advantage of
our side over opponent.
• TSP: the sum of distances so far
• Tic-Tac-Toe: 1 for each row in which
we could win and in we already have
one piece plus 2 for each such row in
we have two pieces

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 Problem Characteristics
• In order to choose the most appropriate method for a
particular problem, it is necessary to analyze the
problem along several key dimensions:
– Is the problem decomposable into a set of independent
smaller or easier subproblems?
– Can solution steps be ignored or at least undone if they prove
unwise?
– Is the problem’s universe predictable?
– Is a good solution to the problem obvious without comparison
to all other possible solutions?
– Is the desired solution a state of the world or a path to a
state?
– Is a large amount of knowledge absolutely required to solve
the problem or is knowledge important only to constrain the
search?
– Can a computer that is simply given the problem return the
solution or will the solution of the problem require interaction
between the computer and a person?
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 Is the problem
Decomposable?
• Whether the problem can be
decomposed into smaller problems?
• Using the technique of problem
decomposition, we can often solve
very large problems easily.

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 Example: Symbolic
Integration( Decomposable Problem)

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 Blocks World Problem
• Following Start: ON(C,A)
A
operators are C B
available: A B C

• CLEAR(x) [ block Goal:

ON(B,C) and
x has nothing on ON(A,B)

it]-> ON(x, Table)

• CLEAR(x) and ON(B,C) and ON(A,B)

CLEAR(y) ->
ON(B,C) ON(A,B)
ON(x,y) [ put x on
y]
CLEAR(A) ON(A,B)
ON(B,C)
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CLEAR(A) ON(A,B)
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 Can Solution Steps be ignored
or undone?
• Suppose we are trying to prove a math theorem. We can prove a
lemma. If we find the lemma is not of any help, we can still
continue.
• 8-puzzle problem
• Chess: A move cannot be taken back.
• Important classes of problems:
– Ignorable ( theorem proving)
– Recoverable ( 8-puzzle)
• Mistakes can still be recovered from but not quite as easily as theorem-proving
problem. An additional step must be performed to undo each incorrect step ,whereas
no action was required to “undo” a useless lemma
– Irrecoverable ( Chess)
• The recoverability of a problem plays an important role in
determining the complexity of the control structure necessary for
the problem’s solution.
– Ignorable problems can be solved using a simple control structure that
never backtracks
– Recoverable problems can be solved by a slightly more complicated
control strategy that does sometimes make mistakes
– Irrecoverable problems will need to be solved by systems that expends
a great deal of effort making each decision since decision must be final.
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 Is the universe Predictable?
– Certain Outcome ( ex: 8-puzzle)
• Every time we make a move, we know exactly what will
happen, so it is possible to plan the entire sequence of
moves & be confident about what will be the resulting state
– Uncertain Outcome ( ex: controlling a robot arm)
• Outcome is uncertain for variety of reasons. Eg: A slight
error in the arm gear box
• For solving certain outcome problems, open
loop approach ( without feedback from
environment) will work fine
• For uncertain-outcome problems, planning can
at best generate a sequence of operators that
has a good probability of leading to a solution.
We need to allow for a process of plan revision
to take place.
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 Is a good solution absolute or
relative?
• Any path problem
• Best path problem

• Any path problems can often be

solved in a reasonable amount of
time by using heuristics that suggest
good paths to explore.
• Best path problems are
computationally harder.
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Example:
Question: Is Marcus Alive?

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Example 02:
TSP

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03/27/20 38
 Is the solution a state or a
• Examples: path?
– Finding a consistent interpretation for the
sentence(NLP) “The bank president ate a dish of
pasta salad with the fork”. We need to find the
interpretation but not the record of the processing.
bank = financial institution / a side of a river
dish = eat dish / eat pasta
pasta salad : dog food  food with dog meat?
with a fork : with ....her friend. / with vegetable.
solution : state of the world
– Water jug : Here it is not sufficient to report that
we have solved , but the path that we found to the
state (2,0). Thus the a statement of a solution to
this problem must be a sequence of operations
( Plan/Path) that produces the final state.
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 What is the role of
knowledge?
• Two examples:
– Chess: Knowledge is required to constrain the search for a
solution
– Newspaper story understanding: Lot of knowledge is required
even to be able to recognize a solution.
• Consider a problem of scanning daily newspapers to decide
which are supporting the democrats and which are
supporting the republicans in some election. We need lots
of knowledge to answer such questions as:
– The names of the candidates in each party
– The facts that if the major thing you want to see done is have
taxes lowered, you are probably supporting the republicans
– The fact that if the major thing you want to see done is
improved education for minority students, you are probably
supporting the democrats.
– etc

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 Does the task require
Interaction with a person?
• The programs require intermediate
interaction with people for additional
inputs and to provided reassurance to
the user.
• There are two types of programs:
– Solitary
– Conversational
• Decision on using one of these
approaches will be important in the
choice of problem solving method.
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 Problem Classification
• There are several broad classes into
which the problems fall. These
classes can each be associated with
generic control strategy that is
appropriate for solving the problems:
– Classification : ex: medical diagnostics,
diagnosis of faults in mechanical devices
– Propose and Refine: ex: design and
planning
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 Production System
1.
Characteristics
Can production systems, like problems, be described by a set
of characteristics that shed some light on how they can easily
be implemented?
2. If so, what relationships are there between problem types
and the types of production systems best suited to solving
the problems?
• Classes of Production systems:
– Monotonic Production System: the application of a rule never
prevents the later application of another rule that could also have
been applied at the time the first rule was selected.

– Non-Monotonic Production system

– Partially commutative Production system: property that if

application of a particular sequence of rules transforms state x
to state y, then permutation of those rules allowable, also
transforms state x into state y.

– Commutative Production system

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 Monotonic Production
Systems
• Production system in which the
application of a rule never prevents
the later application of another rule
that could also have been applied at
the time the first rule was applied.
• i.e., rules are independent.

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 Commutative Production
system
• A partially Commutative production
system has a property that if the
application of a particular sequence of
rules transform state x into state y,
then any permutation of those rules
that is allowable, also transforms state
x into state y.
• A Commutative production system is a
production system that is both
monotonic and partially commutative.
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 Partially Commutative,
Monotonic
• These production systems are useful for solving
ignorable problems.
• Example: Theorem Proving
– They can be implemented without the ability to
backtrack to previous states when it is discovered that
an incorrect path has been followed.
• This often results in a considerable increase in
efficiency, particularly because since the
database will never have to be restored, It is not
necessary to keep track of where in the search
process every change was made.
• They are good for problems where things do not
change; new things get created.

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 Non Monotonic, Partially
Commutative
• Useful for problems in which changes
occur but can be reversed and in which
order of operations is not critical.
– Example: Robot Navigation, 8-puzzle, blocks
world
– Suppose the robot has the following ops: go
North (N), go East (E), go South (S), go West
(W). To reach its goal, it does not matter
whether the robot executes the N-N-E or N-E-N.

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 Not partially Commutative
• Problems in which irreversible change occurs
– Example: chemical synthesis
• The ops can be :Add chemical x to the pot, Change the
temperature to t degrees.
• These ops may cause irreversible changes to the potion
being brewed.
• The order in which they are performed can be very
important in determining the final output.
– (X+y) +z is not the same as (z+y) +x
• Non partially commutative production systems are less
likely to produce the same node many times in search
process.
• When dealing with ones that describe irreversible processes,
it is partially important to make correct decisions the first
time, although if the universe is predictable, planning can be
used to make that less important.

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 Four Categories of Production
System
Monotonic NonMonotonic

Partially Theorem Robot

Commutative proving Navigation

Not Partially Chemical Bridge

Commutative Synthesis

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 Issues in the design of search
programs
• The direction in which to conduct the
search ( forward versus backward
reasoning).
• How to select applicable rules
( Matching)
• How to represent each node of the
search process ( knowledge
representation problem)
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 Summary
• Four steps for designing a program
to solve a problem:
1. Define the problem precisely
2. Analyse the problem
3. Identify and represent the knowledge
required by the task
4. Choose one or more techniques for
problem solving and apply those
techniques to the problem.
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