Exam 3 Flashcards
Chapters 4 and 5
What is the point of a local search algorithm?
To find the final state and not the path itself to get there (such as the 8-queens problem). Only the final configuration matters
What is a state-space landscape?
It’s the state-space shown as a landscape function, with each point (state) having it’s elevation which is defined by the value of the objective function
What is hill-climbing search?
It’s a local search algorithm that continuously moves on to neighboring states with the highest value until it reaches a peak (no neighbor has a higher value)
What is a complete-state formulation?
Every state has all the components of a solution but they might not all be in the right place
What is a greedy local search?
A local search algorithm that grabs a good neighbor state without thinking ahead about where to go next (sometimes hill climbing is greedy)
What is stochastic hill climbing?
Hill climbing that chooses at random from among the uphill moves, depending on the probably of selection which varies with the steepness of the uphill move
What is first-choice hill climbing?
Stochastic hill climbing that generates successors randomly until one is generated that is better than the current state
When would you use first-choice hill climbing?
When a state has many (thousands) of successors
What is random-restart hill climbing?
It conducts a series of hill-climbing searches from randomly generated initial states until a goal is found
Does the success of hill climbing depend on the shape of the state-space landscape?
Yes, a good solution is found quickly depending on the landscape and the algorithm used
What is simulated annealing?
It uses the concept of gradient descend (minimizing cost), starting at a high temperature then goes to the lowest temperature possible
What is local beam search?
It keeps track of k states rather than just one, and allows all parallel search threads to communicate information
What is stochastic beam search?
Local beam search that instead of choosing the top k successors, it chooses successors with a probability proportional to the successor’s value
What are evolutionary algorithms?
Can be seen as variants of stochastic beam search, inspired by biological natural selection; There is a population of individuals (states) in which the fittest (highest value) individuals produce offspring (successor states) that populate the next generation
What is the process that evolutionary algorithms take called?
Recombination
What is a genetic algorithm?
Each individual is a string over a finite alphabet, in which all individuals are also recombined
What makes up evolutionary algorithms?
Population size, individual representation, mixing number (p), selection process, recombination, and mutation rate
What is constrained optimization?
Solutions having to satisfy some hard constraints on the values of variables
What do we assume when we use search algorithms?
A fully observable, deterministic, known environment
What is a belief state?
A set of physical states that the agent believes are possible, usually used in not fully observable and/or nondeterministic environments
What does a conditional plan do?
Specifies what to do depending on what percepts the agent receives while executing the plan
What does an AND-OR search tree consist of?
OR nodes (agent does this or that action), and AND nodes (agent needs to find plan for 2 or more states at the same time)
What is a cyclic solution?
It keeps trying a certain action until it works when that action isn’t guaranteed to execute
What is a sensorless problem?
The agent percept’s provide no information at all
What is localization?
An agent working out where it is, given a map of it’s environment and a sequence of percepts and actions
What is an offline search algorithm?
Agents that compute a complete solution before taking their first action
What is an online search algorithm?
Agents that interleave computation and action; first it takes an action, then observes the environment, then computes the next action