Course: CS420 - Artificial Intelligence

Class 22CTT – Term I/2024-2025

MIDTERM EXAMINATION REVIEW

Q1. The three couples problem. Three couples are on safari, when they come to a river. The only way
for them to cross is with a small rowboat which can only accommodate two people at a time.
Complicating the process is the fact that the women are all the jealous type and refuse to leave their
significant other in the presence of another woman unless she is there as well. How can the couples
cross the river without any romantic strife?
Consider a state as a tuple of values. Which values should be included in the tuple?

From this point, answer the following questions according to the definition of a state above.

Define the initial state and the goal state.

What is the path cost?

What is the maximum number of states in the state space, i.e., including illegal states? Explain.
 Q2. Consider the following graph. The
initial state is marked with a BLUE
circle, and the goal state is marked with
a RED circle. Ties are broken in
alphabetical order.

For each of the following search strategies, state the order in which states are expanded and the path
returned. Vertices should be presented in their exact order.
Note that the path returned will not be accepted if the list of expanded states is wrong.

Algorithms List of expanded states Path returned

Breadth-first search

Uniform cost search

Depth-first search

Greedy best-first search

Graph-search A*

Q3. Consider the 8-puzzle problem. Apply the hill-climbing algorithm with Manhattan distance
heuristic to find a solution for the following pair of initial and goal states.

Initial state 2 8 3 Goal state 1 2 3

1 6 4 8 - 4

7 - 5 7 6 5

Your work should address the following requirements.

 - Draw the search tree including all possible successors of expanded states (except the goal)
- Calculate the heuristic value for every node
- Mark the optimal strategy found

Q4. Consider the 4-bishops problem. Every state of the problem has 4
bishops on the board, each of which is in a separate column.

Answer the following questions:

What is the total number of states in the state space? Explain.

Each step of the search moves a bishop within its own column. How many successors can a state
generate? Explain.

Each state of the problem can be represented in the genetic algorithm as 4 digits, each indicating the
position of a bishop in that column. For example, S = 4213.
Let nb be the number of attacking pairs of bishops of state n.
Define the fitness function for a state n:

The current generation includes 4 states: S1 = 2341; S2 = 2132; S3 = 1232; S4 = 4321.

Calculate the value of Fit(n) for each of the 4 states and the probability that each of them will be
chosen in the “selection” step.

State n S1 S2 S3 S4

Fit(n)
 Prob(n)

Q5. Consider the following game tree. Assume that the root node corresponds to the MAX player and
the search always visits children left-to-right.

Compute the minimax values at every intermediate node. (No alpha-beta pruning at this step)
A B C D E F G

Compute the minimax values at every intermediate node using alpha-beta pruning. If a node is
pruned, mark X.
A B C D E F G

Using the minimax calculations from part a), without performing any alpha-beta calculation, rotate
the children of each node in the above tree at every level to ensure maximum alpha-beta pruning. Fill
in the nodes with the letter of the corresponding node. Draw the new edges.
Q6. This problem asks about the Map coloring problem. Each
region must be colored one of Red (R), Green (G), or Blue (B).
Neighboring regions must be of different colors.
Note that the following questions are mutually independent.

Cross out all values that would be eliminated by Forward Checking, after variable B has been
assigned as shown.
A B C D E F

A and B have been assigned values as shown, but no constraint propagation has been done. Cross out
all values that would be eliminated by Arc Consistency AC-3.
A B C D E F

Variable A is already assigned, and constraint propagation has been done. Circle all unassigned
variables that might be selected by the Minimum-Remaining-Values (MRV) Heuristic.
A B C D E F

R G B RG B G B R G B R G B

Variable A is already assigned, and constraint propagation has been done. Circle all unassigned
variables that might be selected by the Degree Heuristic.
A B C D E F

R G B RG B G B R G B R G B

Assume no variables have been assigned yet, solve the CSP using backtracking with forward checking.
Ties (after considering all necessary heuristics) are resolved by lexicographical order.
Note: for every step, present the MRV values for all regions that are not colored yet. If there are many
regions that have the same minimum MRV, present the DH values for these regions.

Step 1

Variables A B C D E F
 MRV

DH

Assign to the variable ____________________ with the value _____________________________

Step 2

Variables A B C D E F

MRV

DH

Assign to the variable ____________________ with the value ______________________________

Step 3

Variables A B C D E F

MRV

DH

Assign to the variable ____________________ with the value ______________________________

Step 4

Variables A B C D E F

MRV

DH

Assign to the variable ____________________ with the value _______________________________

Step 5

Variables A B C D E F

MRV

DH

Assign to the variable ____________________ with the value ______________________________

Step 6
Assign to the variable ____________________ with the value _____________________________

Q7. You wake up early in the morning, full of excitement and anticipation, so you decide to dress up
very specially. After a while you have narrowed down the choices for each of the four items of clothing,
(H)eadwear, (B)odywear, (L)egwear, and (A)ccessory as follows:

● H ∈ { hat, cap }
● B ∈ { shirt, blouse, jumper }
● L ∈ { leggings, skirt, trousers }
● A ∈ { scarf, tie, cravat }
Furthermore, you have derived the following constraints:
(1) If you choose the jumper, the cap is the only matching headwear.
(2) The leggings do not go together with the hat.
(3) If you wear a shirt or a blouse, then you have to take a tie or a cravat.

Formulate the problem as a CSP, stating the variables and corresponding domains.
Variables

Domains

Binary constraints:

Draw the constraint graph associated with your CSP,

in which each node represents a variable and an
edge connecting two nodes represents the relation
between the two variables denoted by these nodes.
Now, assume that you decide to take the hat. What can you deduce about your other clothing? Cross
out eliminated values to show the domains of the variables after arc consistency has been enforced.
Variables

Domains