Lecture 1 - Introduction

Question 1

What is the difference between a closed and an open system?

Answer 1

Open system - Dependent on their environment
Closed system - Doesn’t interact with the environment. Totally independent

Question 2

What is the difference between global and local optimum?

Answer 2

Global - better than all other solutions i.e. the best
Local - Better than all solutions in a certain neighbourhood, called N

Question 3

What is a heuristic?

Answer 3

A heuristic is a problem dependent search method which seeks good i.e. near-optimal solutions at a reasonable cost without being able to guarantee optimality

Question 4

What is system effectiveness and system efficiency?

Answer 4

Effectiveness - the degree to which goals are achieved i.e. result, output
Efficiency - a measure of the use of inputs (or resources) to achieve output e.g. speed

Question 5

What are the drawbacks for heuristic search?

Answer 5

There is no guarantee for the optimality of the obtained solutions.
Usually can be used only for the specific situation for which they are designed
Performance of heuristic could be sensitive to the setting of those parameters
May give a poor solution

Question 6

What is the difference between deterministic and stochastic heuristic searches?

Answer 6

Deterministic - provide the same solution when run on the given problem instance regardless of how many times.
Stochastic contains a random component and may return a different solution at each time they are run on the same instance

Question 7

What is a pseudo-random number?

Answer 7

A long sequence of numbers that is produced using a deterministic process, but which appear to be random.

Question 8

What are some problems with pseudo-random numbers?

Answer 8

Lack of uniform distribution
Correlation of successive values
The distance between where certain values occur are distributed differently from those in a random sequence