Uninformed vs Informed Search

Uninformed search algorithms are not provided with any information about the whereabouts of the goal, and thus search blindly. The only difference between different uninformed algorithms is the order in which they expand nodes. Several different types of uninformed algorithms are listed below:

• Breadth-first Search
• Depth-first Search
• Uniform Cost Search

Informed searches, on the other hand, are provided with information pertaining to the location of the goal. As a result, these search algorithms are able to evaluate some nodes to be more promising than others. This makes their search more efficient. The informed algorithm that you will be learning in this lesson is,

• A* Search

Several variations on the above searches exist, and will be briefly discussed.