Backtracking

-Prof. Jaydeep Barad

 Backtracking
 Suppose you have to make a series of decisions,
among various choices, where
 You don’t have enough information to know what to
choose
 Each decision leads to a new set of choices
 Some sequence of choices (possibly more than one)
may be a solution to your problem
 Backtracking is a methodical way of trying out
various sequences of decisions, until you find one
that “works”

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 Solving a maze
 Given a maze, find a path from start to finish
 At each intersection, you have to decide between
three or fewer choices:
 Go straight
 Go left

 Go right

 You don’t have enough information to choose correctly

 Each choice leads to another set of choices
 One or more sequences of choices may (or may not) lead to a
solution
 Many types of maze problem can be solved with backtracking

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 Coloring a map
 You wish to color a map with
not more than four colors
 red, yellow, green, blue
 Adjacent countries must be in
different colors
 You don’t have enough information to choose colors
 Each choice leads to another set of choices
 One or more sequences of choices may (or may not) lead to a
solution
 Many coloring problems can be solved with backtracking

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 Backtracking (animation)

dead end
?
dead end
dead end

?
start ? ? dead end
dead end
?
success!

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 Terminology I

A tree is composed of nodes

There are three kinds of

nodes:
The (one) root node State Space Tree
Internal nodes
Leaf nodes Backtracking can be thought of
as searching a tree for a
particular “goal” leaf node
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 Terminology II
 Each non-leaf node in a tree is a parent of one or more
other nodes (its children)
 Each node in the tree, other than the root, has exactly
one parent
parent
Usually, however,
we draw our trees
downward, with
parent the root at the top
children children

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 Real and virtual trees
 There is a type of data structure called a tree
 But we are not using it here
 If we diagram the sequence of choices we make, the
diagram looks like a tree
 In fact, we did just this a couple of slides ago
 Our backtracking algorithm “sweeps out a tree” in “problem
space”

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 The backtracking algorithm
 Backtracking is really quite simple--we “explore” each
node, as follows:
 To “explore” node N:
1. If N is a goal node, return “success”
2. If N is a leaf node, return “failure”
3. For each child C of N,
3.1. Explore C
3.1.1. If C was successful, return “success”
4. Return “failure”

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 N-Queen Problem
 N - Queens problem is to place n - queens in such a
manner on an n x n chessboard that no queens attack
each other by being in the same row, column or diagonal.
 It can be seen that for n =1, the problem has a trivial
solution, and no solution exists for n =2 and n =3. So first
we will consider the 4 queens problem and then generate
it to n - queens problem.
 Given a 4 x 4 chessboard and number the rows and
column of the chessboard 1 through 4.

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 N-Queen Problem
 It can be seen that for n =1, the problem has a trivial
solution, and no solution exists for n =2 and n =3. So first
we will consider the 4 queens problem and then generate
it to n - queens problem.
 Given a 4 x 4 chessboard and number the rows and
column of the chessboard 1 through 4.

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State Space Tree of 4 – Queens
Problem

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State Space Tree of 4 – Queens
Problem

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State Space Tree of 4 – Queens
Problem

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N-Queen Problem …

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 N-Queen Problem …
Algorithm
 isValid(board, row, col)
 Input: The chess board, row and the column of the board.
 Output − True when placing a queen in row and place position is a valid or not.

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 N-Queen Problem …
Algorithm
 solveNQueen(board, col)
 Input − The chess board, the col where the queen is trying to be placed.
 Output − The position matrix where queens are placed.

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 Knapsack Problem using Backtracking
 No. of Items N=4 and Total Capacity W= 8

i1 i2 i3 i4
Wi 2 3 4 5
Vi 3 5 6 10

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 Knapsack Problem using Backtracking
 No. of Items N=4 and Total Capacity W= 8
i1 i2 i3 i4
Wi 2 3 4 5
Vi 3 5 6 10

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Knapsack Problem using
Backtracking

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 Branch & Bound
Branch & Bound is a technique for exploring implicit
directed graph, usually acyclic or even a tree.

Used to get optimal solution to the problem.

At each node we calculate the Bound on the possible value

of any solution.( To prune some branches or close the path)

Bound can be used to select most promising node which

can further explore to get optimal solution

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 Backtracking vs Branch & Bound
Backtracking
• It is used to find all possible solutions available to a problem.
• It traverses the state space tree by DFS(Depth First Search) manner.
• It realizes that it has made a bad choice & undoes the last choice by
backing up.
• It searches the state space tree until it has found a solution.
• It involves feasibility function.

Branch-and-Bound
• It is used to solve optimization problem.
• It may traverse the tree in any manner, DFS or BFS.
• It realizes that it already has a better optimal solution that the pre-solution
leads to so it abandons that pre-solution.
• It completely searches the state space tree to get optimal solution.
• It involves a bounding function.

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