87 research outputs found
Postponing Branching Decisions
Solution techniques for Constraint Satisfaction and Optimisation Problems
often make use of backtrack search methods, exploiting variable and value
ordering heuristics. In this paper, we propose and analyse a very simple method
to apply in case the value ordering heuristic produces ties: postponing the
branching decision. To this end, we group together values in a tie, branch on
this sub-domain, and defer the decision among them to lower levels of the
search tree. We show theoretically and experimentally that this simple
modification can dramatically improve the efficiency of the search strategy.
Although in practise similar methods may have been applied already, to our
knowledge, no empirical or theoretical study has been proposed in the
literature to identify when and to what extent this strategy should be used.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure
On Global Warming (Softening Global Constraints)
We describe soft versions of the global cardinality constraint and the
regular constraint, with efficient filtering algorithms maintaining domain
consistency. For both constraints, the softening is achieved by augmenting the
underlying graph. The softened constraints can be used to extend the
meta-constraint framework for over-constrained problems proposed by Petit,
Regin and Bessiere.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures. Accepted at the 6th International Workshop on
Preferences and Soft Constraint
Constraint-based Sequential Pattern Mining with Decision Diagrams
Constrained sequential pattern mining aims at identifying frequent patterns
on a sequential database of items while observing constraints defined over the
item attributes. We introduce novel techniques for constraint-based sequential
pattern mining that rely on a multi-valued decision diagram representation of
the database. Specifically, our representation can accommodate multiple item
attributes and various constraint types, including a number of non-monotone
constraints. To evaluate the applicability of our approach, we develop an
MDD-based prefix-projection algorithm and compare its performance against a
typical generate-and-check variant, as well as a state-of-the-art
constraint-based sequential pattern mining algorithm. Results show that our
approach is competitive with or superior to these other methods in terms of
scalability and efficiency.Comment: AAAI201
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