Hyperbolic Dovetailing

A familiar quandary arises when there are several possible alternatives for the solution of a problem, but no way of knowing which, if any, are viable for a particular problem instance. Faced with this uncertainty, one is forced to simulate the parallel exploration of alternatives through some kind of co-ordinated interleaving (dovetailing) process. As usual, the goal is to find a solution with low total cost. Much of the existing work on such problems has assumed, implicitly or explicitly, that at most one of the alternatives is viable, providing support for a competitive analysis of algorithms (using the cost of the unique viable alternative as a benchmark). In this paper, we relax this worst-case assumption in revisiting several familiar dovetailing problems.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ESA
• Authors: David G. Kirkpatrick
• Keywords: Alternatives, ESA 2009, Familiar Quandary Arises, Particular Problem Instance