The Optimality of Satisficing Solutions

Abstract

This paper addresses a prevailing assumption in single-agent heuristic search theory- that problem-solving algorithms should guarantee shortest-path solutions, which are typically called optimal. Optimality implies a metric for judging solution quality, where the optimal solution is the solution with the highest quality. When path-length is the metric, we will distinguish such solutions as p-optimal.

Appears in Proceedings of the Fourth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI1988)