Ways of Measuring our Search Strategy
We like to come up with means of distinguishing which is better amongst different possible search strategies. Some axes of comparison are:
- Completeness: Is the algorithm guaranteed to find a solution when there is one?
- Optimality: Does the strategy find the optimal solution? (For example, a shortest path in the case of the chess problem we just described.)
- Time Complexity: How long does it take to find a solution?
- Space Complexity: How much memory is needed to perform the search?
- Time and space complexity are often measured in terms of the depth `d` of the smallest goal state in the search tree as well as the maximum branching
factor `b` of expanding a node.