Chapter 3

Brute Force

Gedamu A.
[email protected]
Image processing and Computer vision SIG

Some of the sides are exported from different sources to clarify the topic

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 2
Content
 Selection and Bubble sorting
 Sequential Searching and Brute-Force String Matching
 Closest-Pair and Convex –Hull problems by Brute Force
 Exhaustive Searching


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 3

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

2. Computing n!

3. Multiplying two matrices

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

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 5
Brute-Force Sorting Algorithm
 Selection Sort:
 Sort Scan the array to find its smallest element and swap it
with the first element.
 Then, starting with the second element,
 scan the elements to the right of it to find the smallest
among them and swap it with the second elements.
 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
Example: 7 3 2 5

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 Analysis of Selection Sort

Time efficiency: Θ(n^2)

Space efficiency: Θ(1), so in place
Stability:
yes

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 7
Brute Force - Bubble Sort

 Another brute force application to the sorting problem

is to:
• compare adjacent elements of the list.
• and exchange them if they are out of order.

 By doing it repeatedly, we end up “Bubbling up” the largest

element to the last position on the list

 The next pass bubbles up the second largest element, and so

on until, after n-1 passes, the list is sorted.

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 8
Brute Force - Bubble Sort

Algorithm BubbleSort (A[0…n-1])

for i ← 0 to n-2 do
for j ← 0 to n-2-i do
if A[j]<A[j+1]
swap A[j] and A[j+1]

The number of times it is executed T(n) depends only on the array’s

size and is given by the following sum:

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 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

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 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.

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 Pseudocode and Efficiency

Θ(mn) comparisons (in the worst case)

Time efficiency:
Why?

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 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: Θ(n^2) multiplications

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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: Θ(n) multiplications

Horner’s Rule is another linear time method.

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 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.

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Closest-Pair Brute-Force Algorithm (cont.)

Efficiency: Θ(n^2) multiplications

How to make it faster? Using divide-and-conquer!

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 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

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 17
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

 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

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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
How do we represent a solution (Hamiltonian circuit)?
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 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 2
a→c→d→b→a 8+7+4+2 = 21
a b
5 3
a→d→b→c→a 5+4+3+8 = 20 8 4
a→d→c→b→a 5+7+3+2 = 17

Efficiency: c 7 d
Θ((n-1)!)

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 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

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 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 Efficiency:
{2,3} 15 $80 Θ(2^n)
{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

 Each subset can be represented by a binary string (bit vector, Ch 5).

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Example 3: The Assignment Problem
 There are n people who need to be assigned to n jobs:
 one person per job.
 The cost of assigning person i to job j is C[i,j].
 Find an assignment that minimizes the total cost.

Job 1 Job 2 Job 3 Job 4

Person 1 9 2 7 8
Person 2 6 4 3 7
Person 3 5 8 1 8
Person 4 7 6 9 4

Algorithmic Plan: Generate all legitimate assignments, compute

their costs, and select the cheapest one.
How many assignments are there? n!
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 Assignment Problem by Exhaustive Search
9 2 7 8
6 4 3 7
C=
5 8 1 8
7 6 9 4
Assignment (col.#s) Total Cost
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
etc.
(For this particular instance, the optimal assignment can be found by
exploiting the specific features of the number given. It is: )

2,1,3,
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 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
 assignment problem

 In many cases, exhaustive search or its variation is the only known way to
get exact solution

The Hungarian method runs in O(n^3) time.

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 Graph Traversal

Many problems require processing all graph vertices (and edges)

in systematic fashion

Graph traversal algorithms:

 Depth-first search (DFS)

 Breadth-first search (BFS)

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 Depth-First Search: (Brave Traversal)
Visits graph’s vertices by always moving away from last visited vertex
to an unvisited one,
backtracks if no adjacent unvisited vertex is available.

 Recursive or it uses a stack

Using Stack
 a vertex is pushed onto the stack when it’s reached for the first time
 a vertex is popped off the stack when it becomes a dead end, i.e., when
there is no adjacent unvisited vertex

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Algorithm

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Example: DFS traversal of undirected graph

a b c d

e f g h

DFS tree:

DFS traversal stack: 1 2 6 7

a b c d
abgcdh
abgcd
abgcd
abgc
abfe

e f g  h
abg
abf
abf
ab

ab

4 3 5 8
…
a

Red edges are tree edges and other edges are back
edges.

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 Notes on DFS
 DFS can be implemented with graphs represented as:
 adjacency matrices: Θ(|V|2). Why?
 adjacency lists: Θ(|V|+|E|). Why?

 Yields two distinct ordering of vertices:

 order in which vertices are first encountered (pushed onto stack)
 order in which vertices become dead-ends (popped off stack)

 Applications:
 checking connectivity, finding connected components
 checking a cyclicity (if no back edges)

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 The Problem

Finding paths from a vertex

to all other vertices with the
smallest number of edges

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 Breadth First Search
 Visits graph vertices by moving across to all the neighbors of
the last visited vertex

 Instead of a stack, BFS uses a queue

 Similar to level-by-level tree traversal

 “Redraws” graph in tree-like fashion.

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Example of BFS traversal of undirected graph

a b c d

e f g h

BFS tree:

1 2 6 8
BFS traversal queue: a b c d

e f g h

3 4 5 7
bef
efg

hd
ch
fg

Red edges are tree edges

d
a

and white edges are cross

edges.
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Write an Algorithm for BFS Using a queue?

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