BackTracking Algorithms.ppt

BackTracking Algorithms Briana B. Morrison With thanks to Dr. Hung Topics What is Backtracking N-Queens Problem Sum of Subsets Graph Coloring Hamiltonian Circuits Other Problems Backtracking Problems Find your way through the well-known maze of hedges by Hampton Court Palace in England? Until you reached a dead end. 0-1 Knapsack problem – exponential time complexity. N-Queens problem. Backtracking Suppose you have to make a series of decisions, among various choices, where You don’t have enough information to know what to choose Each decision leads to a new set of choices Some sequence of choices (possibly more than one) may be a solution to your problem Backtracking is a methodical way of trying out various sequences of decisions, until you find one that “works” Introduction Backtracking is used to solve problems in which a sequence of objects is chosen from a specified set so that the sequence satisfies some criterion. Backtracking is a modified depth-first search of a tree. Backtracking involves only a tree search. Backtracking is the procedure whereby, after determining that a node can lead to nothing but dead nodes, we go back (“backtrack”) to the node’s parent and proceed with the search on the next child. Introduction … We call a node nonpromising if when visiting the node we determine that it cannot possibly lead to a solution. Otherwise, we call it promising. In summary, backtracking consists of Doing a depth-first search of a state space tree, Checking whether each node is promising, and, if it is nonpromising, backtracking to the node’s parent. This is called pruning the state space tree, and the subtree consisting of the visited nodes is called the pruned state space tree. Solving a maze Given a maze, find a path from start to finish At each intersection, you have to decide between three or fewer choices: Go straight Go left Go right You don’t have enough information to choose correctly Each choice leads to another set of choices One or more sequen