The Accuracy of Search Heuristics: An Empirical Study on Knapsack Problems

Theoretical models for the evaluation of quickly improving search strategies, like limited discrepancy search, are based on specific assumptions regarding the probability that a value selection heuristic makes a correct prediction. We provide an extensive empirical evaluation of value selection heuristics for knapsack problems. We investigate how the accuracy of search heuristics varies as a function of depth in the search-tree, and how the accuracies of heuristic predictions are affected by the relative strength of inference methods like pruning and constraint propagation. 1 Motivation The modern understanding [13] of systematic solvers for combinatorial satisfaction and optimization problems distinguishes between two fundamentally different principles. The first regards the intelligent reasoning about a given problem or one of its subproblems. In an effort to reduce the combinatorial complexity, solvers try to assess whether a part of the solution space can contain a feasible or impr...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: CPAIOR
• Authors: Daniel H. Leventhal, Meinolf Sellmann
• Keywords: CPAIOR 2008, Inference, Limited Discrepancy Search, Operations Research, Value Selection Heuristics