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Back to the lesson libraryMECHANISM · 11 MIN
M02.5 CONNECT THE MECHANISM

Why a small choice can create a huge search

Twenty left-or-right choices already make over a million routes. Count a search tree by hand and in code, and see why a computer 1,000 times faster barely helps.

LESSON OVERVIEW11 min lesson

Lesson overview

Twenty left-or-right choices already make over a million routes. Count a search tree by hand and in code, and see why a computer 1,000 times faster barely helps.

What you’ll explore

  • Distinguish last-level paths from all visited tree nodes, calculate their growth, and interpret a stopped or pruned search under its assumptions.
GO TO THE SOURCE

Original explanations, connected to the research.

Poole and Mackworth: graph searching
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