An Arithmetic Approach to the General Two Water Jugs Problem
Yiu Kwong Man · 2013
Abstract—The water jugs problem is a well-known problem in recreational mathematics, problem-solving, artificial intelligence, computer programming and cognitive psychology. The methods of solutions are usually based on heuristics or search methods such as breadth first search (BFS) or depth first search (DFS), which could be time and memory consuming sometimes. In this paper, we present an arithmetic approach to solve this problem, which is simple and suitable for manual calculation or programming language implementation. Analysis of the solution steps involved and some illustrative examples are provided.