Analytical Results on the BFS vs. DFS Algorithm Selection Problem. Part I: Tree Search

Abstract

Breadth-first search (BFS) and depth-first search (DFS) are the two most fundamental search algorithms. We derive approximations of their expected runtimes in complete trees, as a function of tree depth and probabilistic goal distribution. We also demonstrate that the analytical approximations are close to the empirical averages for most parameter settings, and that the results can be used to predict the best algorithm given the relevant problem features Show more