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ID: past-exam-of-the-computer-science-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2022/artificial-intelligence/3/b/solution
Past exam of the computer science course of the University of Oxford 2022 Artificial intelligence 3 b Solution by
Codex 0 2026-10-25
Interpret MyAC as doing at least one initial sweep, then repeating while the preceding sweep deleted a value. Its loop guard otherwise has no initialized truth condition. Both procedures apply the same support-based deletion rule, so both preserve every solution and terminate because finite constraint domains only shrink. Both return false on a detected empty constraint domain; neither successful return establishes satisfiability.
If a sweep changes no constraint domain, every directed arc has been revised against unchanged constraint domains, so all arcs satisfy arc consistency. Conversely, AC-3 places every potentially affected incoming arc back on its work list after a deletion. Its empty work list therefore also establishes arc consistency. When both run to successful completion, they compute the same arc-consistency closure, independently of revision order. To see maximality, any subdomains of the initial constraint domains that satisfy arc consistency survive every revision: each of their values retains a support inside those subdomains. Thus neither procedure can delete a value belonging to any such fixed point. Early failure may leave different intermediate constraint domains, but both failures correctly prove impossibility.
Their scheduling costs differ. AC-3 directs work toward arcs that may have lost supports, with standard time complexity . The full-sweep arc consistency method revisits all arcs after even one remote change. There are at most value deletions, so at most sweeps; a direct implementation including a scan for empty constraint domains costsIf empty-domain detection is maintained during revisions rather than rescanned, the familiar comparison is versus , apart from initialization. These are upper bounds, not exact costs on every input.
In practice MyAC is simple and may have low overhead or benefit from a fortunate sweep order. It can also waste many scans after changes propagate slowly opposite to that order. AC-3 incurs work-list bookkeeping but normally avoids those unrelated revisions. Both inherit the inability of arc consistency to decide arbitrary constraint satisfaction problems.
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