Golden Ticket: Chapter 6

Note!

Starting on Wednesday, January 20th, we will meet in Linfield Hall, Room 125.

For Your Enjoyment

• The field of artificial intelligence uses heuristics to find pretty good solutions to hard problems. For example, here are some chess heuristics.
• CSCI 446, Artificial Intelligence, is offered during Fall Semester of even years.

Chapter 6, Dealing with Hardness

• Try brute force if the problem is small.
• Try using a heuristic (or rule-of-thumb). For example, take any map where there is some state surrounded by an odd number of other states - that map needs four colors.
• Another heuristic approach is to approximate the solution. For example, choose connected pairs of unselected vertices in a graph until no such pair exists. Call the number of vertices selected n. The vertex cover for the graph is between n/2 and n.
• Try solving a different problem. For example, instead of designing cars that are more gas efficient, find a new type of fuel.

Bin Packing Assignment Introduction