Focused local search for random 3-satisfiability

Focused Local Search for Random 3-Satisfiability

A local search algorithm solving an NP-complete optimisation problem can be viewed as a stochastic process moving in an 'energy landscape' towards eventually finding an optimal solution. For the random 3-satisfiability problem, the heuristic of focusing the local moves on the presently unsatisfied clauses is known to be very effective: the time to solution has been observed to grow only linearl...

An efficient local search method for random 3-satisfiability

Threshold Behaviour of WalkSAT and Focused Metropolis Search on Random 3-Satisfiability

An important heuristic in local search algorithms for Satisfiability is focusing, i.e. restricting the selection of flipped variables to those appearing in presently unsatisfied clauses. We consider the behaviour on large randomly generated 3-SAT instances of two focused solution methods: the well-known WalkSAT algorithm, and the straightforward algorithm obtained by imposing the focusing const...

Augmenting Local Search for Satisfiability

This dissertation explores approaches to the satisfiability problem, focusing on local search methods. The research endeavours to better understand how and why some local search methods are effective. At the root of this understanding are a set of metrics that characterize the behaviour of local search methods. Based on this understanding, two new local search methods are proposed and tested, t...

Backbone Guided Local Search for Maximum Satisfiability

Maximum satisfiability (Max-SAT) is more general and more difficult to solve than satisfiability (SAT). In this paper, we first investigate the effectiveness of Walksat, one of the best local search algorithms designed for SAT, on Max-SAT. We show that Walksat is also effective on Max-SAT, while its effectiveness degrades as the problem is more constrained. We then develop a novel method that e...