Difficulty Rating of Sudoku Puzzles by a Computational Model

D 2011

Difficulty Rating of Sudoku Puzzles by a Computational Model

PELÁNEK, Radek

Basic information

Original name

Difficulty Rating of Sudoku Puzzles by a Computational Model

Name in Czech

Hodnocení obtížnosti Sudoku pomocí výpočetního modelu

Authors

PELÁNEK, Radek (203 Czech Republic, guarantor, belonging to the institution)

Edition

USA, Twenty-Fourth International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference, p. 434-439, 6 pp. 2011

Publisher

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)

Other information

Language

English

Type of outcome

Stať ve sborníku

Field of Study

10201 Computer sciences, information science, bioinformatics

Country of publisher

United States of America

Confidentiality degree

není předmětem státního či obchodního tajemství

RIV identification code

RIV/00216224:14330/11:00049812

Organization unit

Faculty of Informatics

ISBN

978-1-57735-501-4

Keywords (in Czech)

výpočetní model; řešení problémů; Sudoku; obtížnost; experimentální vyhodnocení

Keywords in English

computational model; human problem solving; Sudoku; difficulty; evaluation

Abstract

V originále

We discuss and evaluate metrics for difficulty rating of Sudoku puzzles. The correlation coefficient with human performance for our best metric is 0.95. The data on human performance were obtained from three web portals and they comprise thousands of hours of human solving over 2000 problems. We provide a simple computational model of human solving activity and evaluate it over collected data. Using the model we show that there are two sources of problem difficulty: complexity of individual steps (logic operations) and structure of dependency among steps. Beside providing a very good Sudoku-tuned metric, we also discuss a metric with few Sudoku-specific details, which still provides good results (correlation coefficient is 0.88). Hence we believe that the approach should be applicable to difficulty rating of other constraint satisfaction problems.

Links

GAP202/10/0334, research and development project

Name: Řešení obtížných dobře strukturovaných problémů: spolupráce člověka a počítače

Investor: Czech Science Foundation

1M0545, research and development project

Name: Institut Teoretické Informatiky

Investor: Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the CR, Institute for Theoretical Computer Science

Citovat

PELÁNEK, Radek. Difficulty Rating of Sudoku Puzzles by a Computational Model. In Philip M. McCarthy, R. Charles Murray. Twenty-Fourth International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference. USA: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2011, p. 434-439. ISBN 978-1-57735-501-4.

@inproceedings{941345,
   author = {Pelánek, Radek},
   address = {USA},
   booktitle = {Twenty-Fourth International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference},
   editor = {Philip M. McCarthy, R. Charles Murray},
   keywords = {computational model; human problem solving; Sudoku; difficulty; evaluation},
   language = {eng},
   location = {USA},
   isbn = {978-1-57735-501-4},
   pages = {434-439},
   publisher = {Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)},
   title = {Difficulty Rating of Sudoku Puzzles by a Computational Model},
   year = {2011}
}

TY  - JOUR
ID  - 941345
AU  - Pelánek, Radek
PY  - 2011
TI  - Difficulty Rating of Sudoku Puzzles by a Computational Model
PB  - Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI)
CY  - USA
SN  - 9781577355014
KW  - computational model
KW  - human problem solving
KW  - Sudoku
KW  - difficulty
KW  - evaluation
N2  - We discuss and evaluate metrics for difficulty rating of Sudoku puzzles. The correlation coefficient with human performance for our best metric is 0.95. The data on human performance were obtained from three web portals and they comprise thousands of hours of human solving over 2000 problems. We provide a simple computational model of human solving activity and evaluate it over collected data. Using the model we show that there are two sources of problem difficulty: complexity of individual steps (logic operations) and structure of dependency among steps. Beside providing a very good Sudoku-tuned metric, we also discuss a metric with few Sudoku-specific details, which still provides good results (correlation coefficient is 0.88). Hence we believe that the approach should be applicable to difficulty rating of other constraint satisfaction problems.
ER  -

PELÁNEK, Radek. Difficulty Rating of Sudoku Puzzles by a Computational Model. In Philip M. McCarthy, R. Charles Murray. \textit{Twenty-Fourth International Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society Conference}. USA: Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2011, p.~434-439. ISBN~978-1-57735-501-4.

Detailed Information on Publication Record