Lecture 6 – Local Search

Delivered by

Anila Yasmeen

December 11, 2022 1

 In many optimization problems, the path to the
goal is irrelevant; the goal state itself is the
solution

 State space = set of configurations

 Find a configuration satisfying your constraints,
e.g., n-queens

 In such cases, we can use local search algorithms

 Keep a single "current" state, and then shift
states, but don’t keep track of paths.
 Use very limited memory
 Find reasonable solutions in large state spaces.

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  Local search algorithms are useful for solving
optimization problems
 Find the best possible state according to a
given objective function
 Optimize the number of products purchased
by an E-Commerce user
 State: Action taken by the user plus the
resulting page-view
 No track is kept of the path costs between the
states
 All that is seen is whether the user is buying
more products (or not).
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  "Like climbing Everest in thick fog with amnesia“
 A loop that continually moves in the direction of
increasing value, i.e., uphill
 Terminates when it reaches a peak where no
neighbor has a higher value
 Fog with Amnesia: Doesn’t look ahead beyond
the immediate neighbors of the current state.

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Pick a random point in the search space
2. Consider all the neighbors of the current
state
3. Choose the neighbor with the best quality
and move to that state
4. Repeat 2 thru 4 until all the neighboring
states are of lower quality
5. Return the current state as the solution
state.

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  Greedy Local Search: grabs a good neighbor
state without thinking about where to go next
 However, greedy algos do make good
progress generally towards the solution
 Unfortunately, hill-climbing
 Can get stuck in local maxima
 Can be stuck by ridges (a series of local
maxima that occur close together)
 Can be stuck by plateaux (a flat area in the
state space landscape)
 Shoulder: if the flat area rises uphill later on
 Flat local maximum: no uphill rise exists.

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  Stochastic Hill Climbing: Chooses at random
from amongst the uphill moves, based on a
probability distribution

 First-choice Hill Climbing: Implements

stochastic HC by generating successors
randomly until one is generated that is better
than the current state

 Random-restart Hill Climbing: Selects a series of

initial nodes randomly until the solution is
found.
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 Idea: escape local maxima by allowing
some "bad" moves but gradually
decrease their frequency
 If Value[Next] is close to Value[Current], the assignment
is more likely to be accepted.
 If the temperature is high, the exponent will be close to
zero, and the probability will be close to 1.
 As the temperature approaches zero, the exponent
approaches -∞, and the probability approaches zero.
 One can prove: If T decreases slowly
enough, then simulated annealing search
will find a global optimum with
probability approaching 1

 Widely used in VLSI layout, airline

scheduling, etc.
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