On tightness of constraints

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

The tightness of a constraint refers to how restricted the constraint is. The existing work shows that there exists a relationship between tightness and global consistency of a constraint network. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive study on this relationship. Under the concept of k-consistency (k is a number), we strengthen the existing results by establishing that only some of the tightest, not all, binary constraints are used to predict a number k such that strong k-consistency ensures global consistency of an arbitrary constraint network which may include non-binary constraints. More importantly, we have identified a lower bound of the number of the tightest constraints we have to consider in predicting the number k. To make better use of the tightness of constraints, we propose a new type of consistency: dually adaptive consistency. Under this concept, only the tightest directionally relevant constraint on each variable (and thus in total n - 1 such constraints where n is the number of variables) will be used to predict the level of "consistency" ensuring global consistency of a network.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
EditorsMark Wallace
PublisherSpringer-Verlag
Pages777-781
Number of pages5
ISBN (Print)3540232419, 9783540232414
DOIs
StatePublished - 2004

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume3258
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

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