Other references on search

The OU course will give you all you need to know about breadth-first and depth-first search and evaluation functions. You must also know the difference between blind and guided (heuristic) search. The OU book does introduce these, but in a way which you may find confusing. To make things clearer, read chapter 4 of Artificial Intelligence by Winston, and work through an example of hill-climbing.

It's as well to know that there are other search methods, such as A*. It's useful to realise why we need so many different search methods, and how their characteristics differ. See Winston for this.

• Article on Search in The Encyclopaedia of Artificial Intelligence, (RSL: Comp Bd 56) edited by Shapiro. A handy compare-and-contrast of different methods for the computer-minded. It describes depth-first iterative-deepening, a method not mentioned in my other references. This is useful when you want something that has the advantages of breadth-first without its massive space overheads.

• Artificial Intelligence, Winston, Chapter 4. Gives algorithms for the various methods. Since they're all in the same style, they're useful if you want to compare how a programmer would solve search problems. Also useful for comparison with GPS next week.

• Artificial Intelligence by Charniak and McDermott: RSL stacks; Psychology. Because so many of the problems we discuss are puzzles, you may be left with the impression that these methods are useless for ``real-world'' problems. Charniak and McDermott give an example of where they can be useful.