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Restart Policies with Dependence among Runs: A Dynamic Programming Approach

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Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming - CP 2002 (CP 2002)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2470))

Abstract

The time required for a backtracking search procedure to solve a problem can be minimized by employing randomized restart procedures. To date, researchers designing restart policies have relied on the simplifying assumption that runs are probabilistically independent from one another. We relax the assumption of independence among runs and address the challenge of identifying an optimal restart policy for the dependent case. We show how offline dynamic programming can be used to generate an ideal restart policy, and how the policy can be used in conjunction with real-time observations to control the timing of restarts. We present results of experiments on applying the methods to create ideal restart policies for several challenging search problems using two different solvers.

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Ruan, Y., Horvitz, E., Kautz, H. (2002). Restart Policies with Dependence among Runs: A Dynamic Programming Approach. In: Van Hentenryck, P. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming - CP 2002. CP 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2470. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46135-3_38

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46135-3_38

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-44120-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46135-7

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