Talk:A* search algorithm: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 07:50, 23 January 2006

Revision as of 02:16, 7 March 2006

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Also, it'll be great to explain why it's called '''"A*"'''. --[[User:Abdull|Abdull]] 15:47, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

: In response to this question about why it's called A*:

: The notation is borrowed from the statistical literature. Statisticians use a hat (also called a circumflex) to indicate an estimate for a quantity, and often use a star to indicate an estimate that's optimal with respect to a stated criterion (like, say, a minimum variance criterion). When I (Peter E. Hart) was developing this algorithm and especially the theory behind it with my colleagues Nils Nilsson and Bertram Raphael, we adopted this traditional notation. We used hats to indicate estimates of heuristic functions, and went on to compare any other algorithm, call it A, with our provably-optimal (by the criterion of number of nodes expanded) A*. [[User:Hart|Hart]] 02:16, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Also it would be nice to know who first developed it. --[[User:Kubiak|Kubiak]] 19:30, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

: Hm, I hope the new article is a bit better in this regard :-) [[User:Regnaron|Regnaron]] 18:59, 15 December 2005 (UTC)