Chapter 3

Brute Force

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 Brute Force
A straightforward approach, usually based directly on the
problem’s statement and definitions of the concepts involved
Examples:
1. Computing an (a > 0, n a nonnegative integer)

2. Computing n!

3. Multiplying two matrices

4. Searching for a key of a given value in a list

 Brute-Force Sorting Algorithm
Selection Sort
1. Scan the array to find its smallest element and swap it with the first
element.
2. Then, starting with the second element, scan the elements to its right to
find the smallest among them and swap it with the second elements.
3. Generally, on pass i (0  i  n-2), find the smallest element in A[i..n-1]
and swap it with A[i]:

A[0]  . . .  A[i-1] | A[i], . . . , A[min], . . ., A[n-1]

in their final positions
 Selection Sort & Bubble Sort
Selection Sort
1. Start with the 1st element, scan the entire list to find its smallest element and
exchange it with the 1st element
2. Start with the 2nd element, scan the remaining list to find the the smallest among
the last (N-1) elements and exchange it with the 2nd element
3. …

Example: 89 45 68 90 29 34 17
17 | 45 68 90 29 34 89
29 | 68 90 45 34 89
34 | 90 45 68 89
45 | 90 68 89
68 | 90 89
89 | 90
90
 Selection Sort
Algorithm
N-2
for i  0 to N-2 do  ∑
min  i; i=0 N-1
for j  i+1 to N-1 do ∑ c
if (A[j] < A[min]) min  j; j=i+1
}
swap A[i] and A[min] ;
}
Analysis:
N-2 N-1 N-2 2
T(N) = ∑ ∑ c = ∑ c (N-1-i) = c (N-1)N / 2 in O(N )
i=0 j=i+1 i=0
 Bubble Sort
Bubble Sort
1. In each pass, we compare adjacent elements and swap them if they are out of
order until the end of the list. By doing so, the 1 st pass ends up “bubbling up”
the largest element to the last position on the list
2. The 2nd pass bubbles up the 2nd largest, and so on until, after N-1 passes, the list
is sorted.
Example:
Pass 1 89 | 45 68 90 29 34 17 Pass 2 45 | 68 89 29 34 17
45 89 | 68 90 29 34 17 45 68 | 89 29 34 17
68 89 | 90 29 34 17 68 89 | 29 34 17
89 90 | 29 34 17 29 89 | 34 17
29 90 | 34 17 34 89 | 17
34 90 | 17 17 89
17 90
45 68 89 29 34 17 90 45 68 29 34 17 89
largest 2nd largest
 Bubble Sort
Algorithm
N-2
for i  0 to N-2 do  ∑
i=0 N-2-i
for j  0 to N-2-i do  ∑ c
j=i+1
if (A[j+1] < A[j]) swap A[j] and A[j+1] ;
}
}
Analysis: N-2 N-2-i N-2
T(N) = ∑ ∑ c = ∑ c (N-1-i) = c (N-1)N / 2 in O(N2 )
i=0 j=0 i=0
Sec 3.2 Sequential Search and String Matching
Sequential search
Compare successive elements of a given list with a search key until
1. either a match is encountered
2. or the list is exhausted without a match.
0 1 N-1 N

Algorithm:
extra position
SequentialSearch(A[0..N], key){ to store the key
A[N]  key;
i  0;
while (i<N and A[i] != k ) do { i = i + 1};
if i < n return i; Best case: O(1)
else return –1; Analysis: Worst case: O(N)
} Avg. case: O(N)
 Brute-Force String Matching
 pattern: a string of m characters to search for
 text: a (longer) string of n characters to search in
 problem: find a substring in the text that matches the pattern

Brute-force algorithm
Step 1 Align pattern at beginning of text
Step 2 Moving from left to right, compare each character of
pattern to the corresponding character in text until
 all characters are found to match (successful search); or

 a mismatch is detected

Step 3 While pattern is not found and the text is not yet
exhausted, realign pattern one position to the right and
repeat Step 2
Examples of Brute-Force String Matching

1. Pattern: 001011
Text: 10010101101001100101111010

2. Pattern: happy
Text: It is never too late to have a
happy childhood.
 Brute-force String Matching
Pattern: p[0] p[1] … p[m-1] m characters (m <= n)
Text: t[0] t[1] … … … t [n-1] n characters

Purpose: to find a substring of the text that matches the pattern.

More precisely, to find position k such that
t[k] = p[0], t[k+1] = p[1], … t[k+j]= p[j], …, t[k+m-1] = p[m-1]

Brute-force algorithm:
for k = 0 to n-m do
j 0;
while (j < m and p[j] = t[k+j]) do j  j+1;
if j = m return k; // matched
}
return –1; // ( no match) Complexity (assuming m << n)
Worst case: m (n – m + 1) in Θ (nm)
Avg. case: Θ (n + m) = Θ (n) (for random text)
 Brute-Force Polynomial Evaluation
Problem: Find the value of polynomial
p(x) = anxn + an-1xn-1 +… + a1x1 + a0 at a point x = x0

Brute-force algorithm
p  0.0;
for i  n downto 0 do {
power  1;
for j  1 to i do //compute xi
power  power  x;
p  p + a[i]  power;
}
return p;

Efficiency:
Polynomial Evaluation: Improvement
We can do better by evaluating from right to left:
Better brute-force algorithm

p  a[0]
power  1
for i  1 to n do {
power  power  x
p  p + a[i]  power
}
return p

Efficiency:
Closest-Pair Problem
Find the two closest points in a set of n points
(in the two-dimensional Cartesian plane).

Brute-force algorithm
Compute the distance between every pair of distinct
points

and return the indexes of the points for which the distance
is the smallest.
Closest-Pair Brute-Force Algorithm (cont.)

Efficiency:

How to make it faster?

 Brute-Force Strengths and Weaknesses

 Strengths
 wide applicability
 simplicity
 yields reasonable algorithms for some important problems
(e.g., matrix multiplication, sorting, searching, string
matching)

 Weaknesses
 rarely yields efficient algorithms
 some brute-force algorithms are unacceptably slow
 not as constructive as some other design techniques
 Exhaustive Search
A brute force solution to a problem involving search for an element
with a special property, usually among combinatorial objects such as
permutations, combinations, or subsets of a set.

Method:
 generate a list of all potential solutions to the problem in a
systematic manner (see algorithms in Sec. 5.4)

 evaluate potential solutions one by one, disqualifying infeasible

ones and, for an optimization problem, keeping track of the best
one found so far

 when search ends, announce the solution(s) found

Example 1: Traveling Salesman Problem
 Given n cities with known distances between each pair,
find the shortest tour that passes through all the cities
exactly once before returning to the starting city
 Alternatively: Find shortest Hamiltonian circuit in a
weighted connected graph
 Example:
2
a b
5 3
8 4

c 7 d
TSP by Exhaustive Search
Tour Cost
a→b→c→d→a 2+3+7+5 = 17
a→b→d→c→a 2+4+7+8 = 21
a→c→b→d→a 8+3+4+5 = 20
a→c→d→b→a 8+7+4+2 = 21
a→d→b→c→a 5+4+3+8 = 20
a→d→c→b→a 5+7+3+2 = 17

More tours?

Less tours?

Efficiency:
 Example 2: Knapsack Problem
Given n items:
 weights: w1 w2 … wn
 values: v1 v2 … vn
 a knapsack of capacity W
Find most valuable subset of the items that fit into the knapsack

Example: Knapsack capacity W=16

item weight value
1 2 $20
2 5 $30
3 10 $50
4 5 $10
 Knapsack Problem by Exhaustive Search
Subset Total weight Total value
{1} 2 $20
{2} 5 $30
{3} 10 $50
{4} 5 $10
{1,2} 7 $50
{1,3} 12 $70
{1,4} 7 $30
{2,3} 15 $80
{2,4} 10 $40
{3,4} 15 $60
{1,2,3} 17 not feasible
{1,2,4} 12 $60
{1,3,4} 17 not feasible
{2,3,4} 20 not feasible
{1,2,3,4} 22 not feasible
Efficiency:
 Sec 3.4 Exhaustive Search
Assignment Problem
1. Assign N jobs to N people, one person per job.
2. Find an assignment such that the total cost is smallest.
Example:
Let C[i, j] be the cost of assigning job j to person i.
J1 J2 J3 J4  jobs
P1 9 2 7 8
C = P2 6 4 3 7
P3 5 8 1 8  cost
P4 7 6 9 4
persons
* Select one element in each row so that all selected elements are in
different columns and the total sum of the cost is the smallest.
* n-tuple notation: t = <t[1], t[2], t[3], t[4]>
t[i] = the column (job) # of the element selected in row i
* <2, 3, 4, 1>  C(1,2) + C(2,3) + C(3,4) + C(4,1) = 2 + 3 + 8 + 7 = 20
Few iterations
Person 1 2 3 4
========
< 1, 2, 3, 4 >  9 + 4 + 1 + 4 = 18
< 1, 2, 4, 3 >  9 + 4 + 8 + 9 = 30
< 1, 3, 2, 4 >  9 + 3 + 8 + 4 = 24
< 1, 3, 4, 2 >  9 + 3 + 8 + 6 = 26
< 1, 4, 2, 3 >  9 + 7 + 8 + 9 = 33
< 1, 4, 3, 2 >  9 + 7 + 1 + 6 = 23

< 2, 1, 3, 4 >  2 + 6 + 1 + 4 = 13
< 2, 1, 4, 3 >  2 + 6 + 8 + 9 = 25
…
etc. j1 j2 j3 … jN

Total # of permutations = N !
p1 p2 p3 … pN
Final Comments on Exhaustive Search
 Exhaustive-search algorithms run in a realistic amount of
time only on very small instances
 In some cases, there are much better alternatives!
 Euler circuits
 shortest paths
 minimum spanning tree
 assignment problem

 In many cases, exhaustive search or its variation is the

only known way to get exact solution