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A minimum spanning tree (MST) or minimum weight spanning tree is a subset of the edges of a connected, edge-weighted undirected graph that connects all the vertices together, without any cycles and with the minimum possible total edge weight. That is, it is a spanning tree whose sum of edge weights is as small as possible. More generally, any edge-weighted undirected graph has a minimum spanning forest, which is a union of the minimum spanning trees for its connected components.
In graph theory, the shortest path problem is the problem of finding a path between two vertices in a graph such that the sum of the weights of its constituent edges is minimized.
Dijkstra's algorithm is an algorithm for finding the shortest paths between nodes in a weighted graph, which may represent, for example, road networks. It was conceived by computer scientist Edsger W. Dijkstra in 1956 and published three years later.
Breadth-first search (BFS) is an algorithm for searching a tree data structure for a node that satisfies a given property. It starts at the tree root and explores all nodes at the present depth prior to moving on to the nodes at the next depth level. Extra memory, usually a queue, is needed to keep track of the child nodes that were encountered but not yet explored.
Depth-first search (DFS) is an algorithm for traversing or searching tree or graph data structures. The algorithm starts at the root node and explores as far as possible along each branch before backtracking. Extra memory, usually a stack, is needed to keep track of the nodes discovered so far along a specified branch which helps in backtracking of the graph.
A* is a graph traversal and pathfinding algorithm, which is used in many fields of computer science due to its completeness, optimality, and optimal efficiency. Given a weighted graph, a source node and a goal node, the algorithm finds the shortest path from source to goal.
The Bellman–Ford algorithm is an algorithm that computes shortest paths from a single source vertex to all of the other vertices in a weighted digraph. It is slower than Dijkstra's algorithm for the same problem, but more versatile, as it is capable of handling graphs in which some of the edge weights are negative numbers. The algorithm was first proposed by Alfonso Shimbel, but is instead named after Richard Bellman and Lester Ford Jr., who published it in 1958 and 1956, respectively. Edward F. Moore also published a variation of the algorithm in 1959, and for this reason it is also sometimes called the Bellman–Ford–Moore algorithm.
Backtracking is a class of algorithms for finding solutions to some computational problems, notably constraint satisfaction problems, that incrementally builds candidates to the solutions, and abandons a candidate ("backtracks") as soon as it determines that the candidate cannot possibly be completed to a valid solution.
In numerical analysis, hill climbing is a mathematical optimization technique which belongs to the family of local search. It is an iterative algorithm that starts with an arbitrary solution to a problem, then attempts to find a better solution by making an incremental change to the solution. If the change produces a better solution, another incremental change is made to the new solution, and so on until no further improvements can be found.
Dendral was a project in artificial intelligence (AI) of the 1960s, and the computer software expert system that it produced. Its primary aim was to study hypothesis formation and discovery in science. For that, a specific task in science was chosen: help organic chemists in identifying unknown organic molecules, by analyzing their mass spectra and using knowledge of chemistry. It was done at Stanford University by Edward Feigenbaum, Bruce G. Buchanan, Joshua Lederberg, and Carl Djerassi, along with a team of highly creative research associates and students. It began in 1965 and spans approximately half the history of AI research.
In computer science, a topological sort or topological ordering of a directed graph is a linear ordering of its vertices such that for every directed edge (u,v) from vertex u to vertex v, u comes before v in the ordering. For instance, the vertices of the graph may represent tasks to be performed, and the edges may represent constraints that one task must be performed before another; in this application, a topological ordering is just a valid sequence for the tasks. Precisely, a topological sort is a graph traversal in which each node v is visited only after all its dependencies are visited. A topological ordering is possible if and only if the graph has no directed cycles, that is, if it is a directed acyclic graph (DAG). Any DAG has at least one topological ordering, and algorithms are known for constructing a topological ordering of any DAG in linear time. Topological sorting has many applications, especially in ranking problems such as feedback arc set. Topological sorting is possible even when the DAG has disconnected components.
Pathfinding or pathing is the search, by a computer application, for the shortest route between two points. It is a more practical variant on solving mazes. This field of research is based heavily on Dijkstra's algorithm for finding the shortest path on a weighted graph.
Query optimization is a feature of many relational database management systems and other databases such as NoSQL and graph databases. The query optimizer attempts to determine the most efficient way to execute a given query by considering the possible query plans.
Commitment ordering (CO) is a class of interoperable serializability techniques in concurrency control of databases, transaction processing, and related applications. It allows optimistic (non-blocking) implementations. With the proliferation of multi-core processors, CO has also been increasingly utilized in concurrent programming, transactional memory, and software transactional memory (STM) to achieve serializability optimistically. CO is also the name of the resulting transaction schedule (history) property, defined in 1988 with the name dynamic atomicity. In a CO compliant schedule, the chronological order of commitment events of transactions is compatible with the precedence order of the respective transactions. CO is a broad special case of conflict serializability and effective means to achieve global serializability across any collection of database systems that possibly use different concurrency control mechanisms.
A maze-solving algorithm is an automated method for solving a maze. The random mouse, wall follower, Pledge, and Trémaux's algorithms are designed to be used inside the maze by a traveler with no prior knowledge of the maze, whereas the dead-end filling and shortest path algorithms are designed to be used by a person or computer program that can see the whole maze at once.
Any-angle path planning algorithms are pathfinding algorithms that search for a Euclidean shortest path between two points on a grid map while allowing the turns in the path to have any angle. The result is a path that cuts directly through open areas and has relatively few turns. More traditional pathfinding algorithms such as A* either lack in performance or produce jagged, indirect paths.
In artificial intelligence and computer programming, state space planning is a process used in designing programs to search for data or solutions to problems. In a computer algorithm that searches a data structure for a piece of data, for example a program that looks up a word in a computer dictionary, the state space is a collective term for all the data to be searched. Similarly, artificial intelligence programs often employ a process of searching through a finite universe of possible procedures for reaching a goal, to find a procedure or the best procedure to achieve the goal. The universe of possible solutions to be searched is called the state space. State space planning is the process of deciding which parts of the state space the program will search, and in what order.
The problem of Multi-Agent Pathfinding (MAPF) is an instance of multi-agent planning and consists in the computation of collision-free paths for a group of agents from their location to an assigned target. It is an optimization problem, since the aim is to find those paths that optimize a given objective function, usually defined as the number of time steps until all agents reach their goal cells. MAPF is the multi-agent generalization of the pathfinding problem, and it is closely related to the shortest path problem in the context of graph theory.
The random surfing model is a graph model which describes the probability of a random user visiting a web page. The model attempts to predict the chance that a random internet surfer will arrive at a page by either clicking a link or by accessing the site directly, for example by directly entering the website's URL in the address bar. For this reason, an assumption is made that all users surfing the internet will eventually stop following links in favor of switching to another site completely. The model is similar to a Markov chain, where the chain's states are web pages the user lands on and transitions are equally probable links between these pages.
Optimal kidney exchange (OKE) is an optimization problem faced by programs for kidney paired donations (also called Kidney Exchange Programs). Such programs have large databases of patient-donor pairs, where the donor is willing to donate a kidney in order to help the patient, but cannot do so due to medical incompatibility. The centers try to arrange exchanges between such pairs. For example, the donor in pair A donates to the patient in pair B, the donor in pair B donates to the patient in pair C, and the donor in pair C donates to the patient in pair A.
References
- A. Blum and M. Furst (1997). Fast planning through planning graph analysis . Artificial intelligence. 90:281-300.