hill climbing


hill climbing

(algorithm)A graph search algorithm where the currentpath is extended with a successor node which is closer to thesolution than the end of the current path.

In simple hill climbing, the first closer node is chosenwhereas in steepest ascent hill climbing all successors arecompared and the closest to the solution is chosen. Bothforms fail if there is no closer node. This may happen ifthere are local maxima in the search space which are notsolutions. Steepest ascent hill climbing is similar to best first search but the latter tries all possible extensions ofthe current path in order whereas steepest ascent only triesone.