Nifty assignmentsBrute force and backtracking.ppt

SIGCSE 2003 The puzzle Brute force problem solving Requirements Example Example Oh no! Oh yeah! Additional restrictions Sequence class Problems 8-queens Problems Faster! Faster still! Nifty assignments Nifty assignments Nifty assignments Nifty assignments Nifty assignments Nifty assignments Nifty assignments Nifty assignments Nifty assignments The puzzle Nifty assignments Nifty assignments Challenges: Algorithm analysis: instrumenting the program to keep track of running time and number of calls to the filter and to the backtrack method. Here’s the assignment. One of the things that makes these problems attractive is that the problem is easily specified and easily understood, although the solution is not. Problem solving strategy is brute force Not this. Try all possibilities Run then through a filter Toss away non-solutions; keep the solutions. This guarantees finiteness Assign Sequence class earlier in the semester. That then becomes part of this assignment Fail: dead end or we have exhausted all the possibilities at this point, then backtrack. Backtrack fails: nothing left to undo, algorithm ends. Try each element put it in the sequence generate all possible remaining parts of the sequence. Take it off the sequence 281 trillion Map represented a nxn boolean adjacency matrix. If element I,j is true, region I and j have a common border and must be different colors. Can specify non planer maps. Easy, solution is known length; each element is a color. Harder, length is not known, but is bounded. Easier: Maze like this one has no loops Harder: Maze with loops. Must keep track of where we’ve been to prevent looping. * Nifty assignments:Brute force and backtracking Steve Weiss Department of Computer Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill weiss@cs.unc.edu  Generate candidates Filter Solutions Trash Candidate set must be finite. Must be an “Oh yeah!” problem. Combination lock 60*60*60 = 216,000 candidates Solution is a seque