Author: Stan Eisenstat
Subject: Re: [Cs223] confusion about backtracking
Date: Thursday, 13 Feb 2020, 10:11:28

    > Message Posted By: Unknown
    >
    > I am confused about the process of backtracking - like the knight's
    > problem, are we guaranteed to always start with the knight in the same
    > spot or the same number in the same bin? Say you are running opt on items
    > 3 2 and 1 with a binsize of 4. You start with running all solutions with 3
    > in bin 0, which include all solution with 2 in bin 1 and with 1 in bin 1.
    > After having removed all other items from bins, do you place 3 in bin 1,
    > and test all solutions with 2 in bin 0 and 1 in bin 0, then do the same
    > with 3 in bin 3? Afterwards, do you then start testing all solutions with
    > 2 in bin 0, and finally with 1 in bin 0? That seems like it will
    > unnecessarily repeat a lot of solutions. Is it sufficient to solely test
    > all solutions with 3 in bin 0, or 3 in each position?

To see what backtracking does for the example above,
run the command

  % /c/cs223/Hwk2/BinpackX 4 3 2 1 -optABCDE

(where -optABCDE disables all of the backtracking
heuristics).

--Stan-