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Visualizations to Summarize Search Behavior

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Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNPSE,volume 12333))

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Abstract

In this paper, we argue that metrics that assess the performance of backtrack search for solving a Constraint Satisfaction Problem should not be visualized and examined only at the end of search, but their evolution should be tracked throughout the search process in order to provide a more complete picture of the behavior of search. We describe a process that organizes search history by automatically recognizing qualitatively significant changes in the metrics that assess search performance. To this end, we introduce a criterion for quantifying change between two time instants and a summarization technique for organizing the history of search at controllable levels of abstraction. We validate our approach in the context of two algorithms for enforcing consistency: one that is activated by a surge of backtracking and the second that modifies the structure of the constraint graph. We also introduce a new visualization for exposing the behavior of variable ordering heuristics and validate its usefulness both as a standalone tool and when displayed alongside search history.

This research is supported by NSF Grant No. RI-1619344 and NSF CAREER Award No. III-1652846. The experiments were completed utilizing the Holland Computing Center of the University of Nebraska, which receives support from the Nebraska Research Initiative.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Note that we can interrupt search at any time to conduct the analysis and need not wait until the end of search.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Constraint Systems Laboratory, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, 68508, USA

    Ian S. Howell & Berthe Y. Choueiry

  2. Visualization Laboratory, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE, 68508, USA

    Ian S. Howell & Hongfeng Yu

Authors
  1. Ian S. Howell
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  2. Berthe Y. Choueiry
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  3. Hongfeng Yu
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Correspondence to Ian S. Howell .

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  1. Insight Centre for Data Analytics, School for Computer Science and Information Technology, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Helmut Simonis

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Howell, I.S., Choueiry, B.Y., Yu, H. (2020). Visualizations to Summarize Search Behavior. In: Simonis, H. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming. CP 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12333. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58475-7_23

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58475-7_23

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