On the Fine Structure of Large Search Spaces

Recently there has been significant progress in our understanding of the computational nature of combinatorial problems. Randomized search methods, both complete and incomplete, often outperform deterministic strategies. In this paper, we relate the performance of randomized methods to geometric properties of the underlying search space. In particular, our study reveals the inherent fractal nature of the search space, at different length scales, for a range of combinatorial problems. We also discuss the impact of these results on the design of better search methods. In Proc. IEEE ICTAI'99

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1999
• Where: ICTAI
• Authors: Carla P. Gomes, Bart Selman
• Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Combinatorial Problems, ICTAI 1999, Search Methods, Search Space