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Main Authors: Cameron, Chris, Hartford, Jason, Lundy, Taylor, Truong, Tuan, Milligan, Alan, Chen, Rex, Leyton-Brown, Kevin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.12581
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author Cameron, Chris
Hartford, Jason
Lundy, Taylor
Truong, Tuan
Milligan, Alan
Chen, Rex
Leyton-Brown, Kevin
author_facet Cameron, Chris
Hartford, Jason
Lundy, Taylor
Truong, Tuan
Milligan, Alan
Chen, Rex
Leyton-Brown, Kevin
contents We introduce Monte Carlo Forest Search (MCFS), a class of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for learning policies in {tree MDPs}, for which policy execution involves traversing an exponential-sized tree. Examples of such problems include proving unsatisfiability of a SAT formula; counting the number of solutions of a satisfiable SAT formula; and finding the optimal solution to a mixed-integer program. MCFS algorithms can be seen as extensions of Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) to cases where, rather than finding a good path (solution) within a tree, the problem is to find a small tree within a forest of candidate trees. We instantiate and evaluate our ideas in an algorithm that we dub Knuth Synthesis, an MCFS algorithm that learns DPLL branching policies for solving the Boolean satisfiability (SAT) problem, with the objective of achieving good average-case performance on a given distribution of unsatisfiable problem instances. Knuth Synthesis is the first RL approach to avoid the prohibitive costs of policy evaluations in an exponentially-sized tree, leveraging two key ideas: first, we estimate tree size by randomly sampling paths and measuring their lengths, drawing on an unbiased approximation due to Knuth (1975); second, we query a strong solver at a user-defined depth rather than learning a policy across the whole tree, to focus our policy search on early decisions that offer the greatest potential for reducing tree size. We matched or exceeded the performance of a strong baseline on three well-known SAT distributions, facing problems that were two orders of magnitude more challenging than those addressed in previous RL studies.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2211_12581
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle UNSAT Solver Synthesis via Monte Carlo Forest Search
Cameron, Chris
Hartford, Jason
Lundy, Taylor
Truong, Tuan
Milligan, Alan
Chen, Rex
Leyton-Brown, Kevin
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
We introduce Monte Carlo Forest Search (MCFS), a class of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms for learning policies in {tree MDPs}, for which policy execution involves traversing an exponential-sized tree. Examples of such problems include proving unsatisfiability of a SAT formula; counting the number of solutions of a satisfiable SAT formula; and finding the optimal solution to a mixed-integer program. MCFS algorithms can be seen as extensions of Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) to cases where, rather than finding a good path (solution) within a tree, the problem is to find a small tree within a forest of candidate trees. We instantiate and evaluate our ideas in an algorithm that we dub Knuth Synthesis, an MCFS algorithm that learns DPLL branching policies for solving the Boolean satisfiability (SAT) problem, with the objective of achieving good average-case performance on a given distribution of unsatisfiable problem instances. Knuth Synthesis is the first RL approach to avoid the prohibitive costs of policy evaluations in an exponentially-sized tree, leveraging two key ideas: first, we estimate tree size by randomly sampling paths and measuring their lengths, drawing on an unbiased approximation due to Knuth (1975); second, we query a strong solver at a user-defined depth rather than learning a policy across the whole tree, to focus our policy search on early decisions that offer the greatest potential for reducing tree size. We matched or exceeded the performance of a strong baseline on three well-known SAT distributions, facing problems that were two orders of magnitude more challenging than those addressed in previous RL studies.
title UNSAT Solver Synthesis via Monte Carlo Forest Search
topic Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.12581