Artificial Intelligence

Propositional (Boolean) Logic

The University of Faisalabad 1

 What is Boolean Satisfiability(SAT)?
• Example:
– You are instructed to organize the embassy hall
• the ambassador wants to invite Peru, but exclude Qatar
• the vice-ambassador wants Qatar, Romania, or both
• recent diplomatic events make it impossible to invite both
• Romania and Peru

• What do you invite?

• An assignment of truth values to predicates which evaluates to

true is a model of the formula
• A model of φ, is {P = T, Q = T, R= F}
The University of Faisalabad 2
 What is Boolean Satisfiability?
• Instance: a set U of variables and a collection of C of clauses
over the variables U
– variables: all boolean, i.e., domains are all [T, F]
– clauses: are disjunction or conjunction of literals
– literals: a variable or its negation
– conjunctive normal form (CNF): formula is conjunction of clauses,
clauses are disjunctions of literals, e.g.,

– disjunctive normal form (DNF): formula is disjunction of clauses,

clauses are conjunction of literals, e.g.,

– Question: is there a model for C?

• model: truth assignment to variables that satisfies all clauses (if
CNF) or at least one clause (if DNF)

The University of Faisalabad 3

 Boolean Satisfiability (SAT)
• Recall a few important operations with booleans

The University of Faisalabad 4

 Clausal Normal Form (CNF)
• DNF and CNF, as normal forms, are useful for automated
problem solving
• In both CNF and DNF, negation (~) can only be used as part
of a literal (i.e., it can only precede a propositional variable)
• Every propositional formula can be converted to an
equivalent formula in CNF or DNF
• k-CNF: each clause has k lilterals

The University of Faisalabad 5

 Why Reduce to SAT(SATISFIABILITY)?
• There are many interesting problems that can be reduced to
SAT instances
– Planning, scheduling, circuit design, model verification . . .
– Model leads to solution of original problem

• Efficient algorithms can often decide large, interesting

problems
• SAT is simple
• SAT solvers employ very sophisticated search techniques
• SAT solvers are the workhorses of AI

The University of Faisalabad 6

 Reduction of SAT: Example
• Correspondence between digital logic circuit and propositional
logic

The University of Faisalabad 7

 Reduction of SAT: Example
• Correspondence between digital logic circuit and propositional
logic

• Are the two circuits equivalent?

• Is SAT?

The University of Faisalabad 8

 Transforming to CNF
• Unfortunately applying distribution can cause the size of the
formula to grow exponentially
– Original formula:

– Transformation gives:

• However, we are not usually interested in equivalent CNF

formulations
• We only care about satisfiability and possibly a simple way
to extract the model of the original formula

The University of Faisalabad 9

 DPLL Procedure
• Davis-Putnam-Logeman-Loveland Procedure
• DPLL benefits from propagation
– propagation in SAT: transform the set of clauses while preserving
satisfiability
• Propagation in DPLL is based on two transformations on the
set of clauses:
– unit propagation (UP): if a unit clause p appears, remove ~ from
other clauses and remove all clauses including p
– pure-literal elimination: if p occurs only negated, or only unnegated,
delete all clauses involving p

The University of Faisalabad 10

 DPLL Procedure
• Unit propagation and pure-literal elimination is a Boolean
Constraint Propagation (BCP) procedure.

• DPLL: recursive depth-first enumeration of possible models

The University of Faisalabad 11

 Conflict-Driven Backjumping and clause learning

• BCP detects conflicts when a clause becomes empty

• Chronological backtracking: go back to most recent
branching and flip value of variable
• Notice that we can make a more informed choice on where to
• backtrack
– most recent decision is not necessarily what has caused the conflict
– can deduce the culprit when BCP finds a conflict
• Clause learning: learn clauses that will avoid repeating
mistakes
• Conflict-driven backjumping: backtrack to the culprit

The University of Faisalabad 12

 Conflict-Driven Backjumping and clause learning

• Conflict-driven backjumping can significantly reduce the

search space
• Notice that clauses learned through conflict (conflict clauses)
never cease to be useful
• Also, conflict clauses are useful in generating new conflict
clauses
– BCP picks up more conflicts, therefore learns more
• All modern systematic SAT solvers employ these strategies
– real-world applications
– thousands, even millions of variables
– research direction changes towards more efficient implementations

The University of Faisalabad 13