Abstract:
We present a new method for estimating the number of solutions of constraint satisfaction problems’ . We use a stochastic forward checking algorithm for drawing a sample of paths from a search tree. With this sample, we compute two values related to the number of solutions of a CSP instance. First, an unbiased estimate, second, a lower bound with an arbitrary low error probability. We will describe applications to the Boolean Satisfiability problem and the Queens problem. We shall give some experimental results for these problems.
Registration: ISBN 978-0-262-51091-2