Learning Search Algorithms: An Educational View

What is it about?

Artificial intelligence methods find their practical usage in many applications including the maritime industry. The paper concentrates on the methods of uninformed and informed search, potentially usable in solving complex problems based on the state-space representation. The problem of introducing the search algorithms to newcomers has its technical and psychological dimensions. The authors show how it is possible to cope with both of them through the design and use of specialized authoring systems. A typical example of searching a path through the maze is used to demonstrate how to test, observe and compare properties of various search strategies. The performance of search methods is evaluated based on common criteria.

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Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Photo by Glenn Carstens-Peters on Unsplash

Why is it important?

The paper demonstrated an educational aspect of how formal tasks solved through search algorithms could be modeled, tested, and evaluated. As a working example, the Labyrinth authoring software tool has been discussed, implemented in both declarative and procedural ways (SWI Prolog and Java). It helped to obtain statistical data used for the evaluation of applied methods. The set of tested methods included the most usual search algorithms.