October 28, 2024

Topics of the day

• Writing hash functions
• Stateful comparators
• Problem spaces

Suggested readings

• Section 3.1.3 from George Luger, Artificial Intelligence, 5e
• Section 3.1.3 from George Luger, Artificial Intelligence, 6e

Online references

• State space search (en.wikipedia.org)
• Hash functions (en.wikipedia.org)
• hash in C++ (en.cppreference.com)
• hashCode() in Java (docs.oracle.com)

Questions and exercises

1. What are the requirements for a hash function? Once a hash function has met the requirements, what makes a legal hash function better or worse?
2. Searching a "state space" is a little different from the kinds of graph searching we've done with Dijkstra's algorithm and A*. What's the biggest difference?
3. Pick a two-player face-to-face game such as tic-tac-toe or checkers or othello or connect 4 or something like that. What data would have to be stored in a "state" of the game you chose?

Assignments

Today

• Homework 4 revision

Upcoming

• Project 3: A* due (04 Nov)
• Homework 5 due (04 Nov)

Board photos

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