KR-IST - Lecture 3b: Knowledge Test
Chris Thornton
Question
The Missionaries and Cannibals problem is described as
follows. On one side of a river there are three misssionaries
and three cannibals. There is a boat which can be used to
transfer people from one side to the other. No more than two
people can fit in the boat at any one time, and it has to
have at least one person in it during any crossing. The
problem is to find the shortest sequence of crossings which
gets all six people from one side to the other without ever
creating a situation where cannibals outnumber missionaries
on either side of the river.
What is the first thing we need to do in order to solve this
problem using search?
What is the second thing?
What is the third?
Question
You have 99 pounds of debt accumulated on your credit card.
The annual rate of interest on this card is 16% for debt
under 110 pounds of debt and 25% otherwise. The problem is to
decide whether it is worth transferring the debt to another
card. Card A offers 8% for debt under 125 pounds and 35% for
anything over that. Card B offers 18% for debt under 150
pounds and 23% for anything over that. You can only transfer
your debt once per year and the rules are you have to
transfer all of it in one go at a cost of 10 pounds. You
never make any payments but (for some reason) no penalties or
other charges are applied for this.
What would be a suitable representation for states in this
problem?
How would you generate successors?