Course Description
Many problems faced by intelligent agents can be solved using searching methods. This course will provide you with a definition for search problems and useful methods to solve these problems.
Learning Objectives
Introducing Search Problems
- start the course
- define search problems and how these can be used by AI agents
- list some problems that are ideal for searching algorithms
- define how to represent search problems
Brute Force Searching
- describe the breadth-first search algorithm
- describe the depth-first search algorithm
- describe depth-limited search and the iterative deepening search algorithms
Informed Searching
- describe the greedy approach for best-first informed searching
- define heuristics and their various properties
- describe how to create a good heuristic function for a given search problem
- describe the A* search algorithm
Local Searching
- describe local searching and the hill-climbing search algorithm
- describe the simulated annealing search algorithm and how it improves on hill-climbing search
Practice: Identifying Search Problems
- describe the three environmental characteristics of search problems, state the function for a consistent heuristic, and state the function for an A* search