Talk:State space (computer science)

About disambiguation of state space
There is a "state space" in controls. I'm fixing my links to says State space (controls), but it's not clear to me that this should not be moved to a similarly title page and a disambiguation page set up here. -rs2 06:15, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
 * There is also an, as of the time or writing,broken link to State space (physics), which I suspect to be the same sense as the control engineering one. I think that disambiguation is definitely needed.  The current way in which this is done, with a See Also section, is not the correct way even when the primary reference isn't an explicit disambiguation page. David Woolley 10:46, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
 * I moved these items in the See Also section to the top (and using Template:About):
 * State space representation for information about continuous state space in control engineering.
 * State space (physics) for information about continuous state space in physics.
 * Saung Tadashi (talk) 10:26, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The "phase space", "state space" and "configuration space" are the same things used interchangably in physics, theory of dynamic systems, control of dynamic systems and computer science. A. Pitts says in "The Formal Semantics of Programming Languages" that configurations are also called "states".

Presently, Wikipedia represents the idea of a "state-space" to vary between disciplines. I belive that this is inaccurate. A "state" is simply a description of a real object. A "state-space" is a set of mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive states. This particular "state-space" description confuses the notion of a "state-machine" with the notion of a "state-space." In particular, the concept that is described is that of a state-machine.--Terry Oldberg (talk) 16:54, 29 May 2008 (UTC)


 * I support this comment. I think some different articles about state-space (such as State space (physics)) could be directly merged here. If the article is long as State space representation, however, I think it is valid to create a new section and use the template "Main article" to redirect to the specific article. Saung Tadashi (talk) 10:34, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 September 2019 and 4 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Thrice done french.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 10:09, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

/r/ an example
Requesting an example of directed graph which represents system states 141.113.86.94 (talk) 10:16, 14 November 2012 (UTC)

Computation of state space size of Chess
There are two issues I see with the computation of the state space size of chess: (1) It does not consider the possibility of promotion of pawns, which make multiple queens or more than 2 rooks, bishops, or knights for one side; and (2) the pieces are not all distinct (choosing, for instance, to place a white pawn on a1 and then a white pawn on a2 is the same as placing them in the opposite order). These assumptions should either be stated or the calculation needs to be updated. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AsphyxiateDrake (talk • contribs) 08:52, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
 * Those problems are likely insignificant compared to the (entirely false) aasumption that all states are legally achievable in the game. The true state space of chess is remarkably difficult to calculate and is a rather bad example to choose for a game state space.  In any case, the whole discussion on games is rather tangential to what this article should really be about and is entirely unbalancing it.
 * In fact, I am inclined to delete most of it. The number given (~1018) is entirely wrong and is not actually verified by the source cited.  God's algorithm gives the much more believable number of ~10154 from a source that verifiablilty does check out. SpinningSpark 09:46, 2 June 2018 (UTC)