August 23 (Tue), 2012 HW1 assigned (exercises 1.1 and 1.3 [P], due Tuesday, September 4, 2012. Administrative information: textbook, syllabus, grading policy. Definitions of AI. Issues of _AI Magazine_ and _IEEE Intelligent Systems_ handed out to students for possible use with exercise 1.3.
August 28 (Tue), 2012 Q1. Parts of Ch.1 [P], up to Succinctness (conciseness) of representations: state-space, features or propositions, objects and relations (started).
August 30 (Thu), 2012 Reminder: HW1 due on 2012-09-04 (Thuesday). Please bring paper at the beginning of class. Ch.1 concluded. Four application domains: autonomous delivery robot, diagnostic assistant, trading agent, intelligent tutoring systems, listing example inputs (prior knowledge, past experience, goals, ond bservations) and sample activities. Ch.2 [P] started. Example of trading agent. Percept and command traces. Causal transductions. Belief states.
September 4 (Tue), 2012 HW2 assigned: Exercise 3.3 [P], due 2012-09-20 (Thursday). Ch. 2[P] completed.
September 6 (Thu), 2012 The state-space approach to problem solving. Uninformed (blind) search: DFS, (first part of Ch.3 [P]).
September 11 (Tue), 2012 Uninformed (blind) search continued: BFS, Dijkstra's algorithm (the uniform-cost method, a.k.a. the lowest-cost search method). Examples using the search applet by Poole and Mackworth. Heuristics, started.
September 13 (Thu), 2012 Guest presentation by Nick Stiffler. Review of Dijkstra's algorithm and its correctness.
September 18 (Tue), 2012 Q2 (missionaries and cannibals in-class exercise, in detail). HW2 due date delayed to September 25 (Tuesday). A*: proof of admissibility. The consistency condition, which is defined for all pairs of nodes, and the equivalent monotone condition, which is defined for arcs, and which can be shown to be equivalent, insure that closed nodes do not need to be reopened when using A*. We prove this. Brief description of the formal transformation of an instance of a graph with h(.) to one without h(.), such that the order of node expansions by A* on the first is the same as the order of expansions by Dijkstra's algorithm on the second: W'(m,n) = W(m,n) - h(m) + h(n).
September 20 (Thu), 2012 Example of use of A*: traveling in Romania with the straight-line heuristic. Consistency of the straight-line heuristic. Heuristics as the solution to simplified problems. The towers of Hanoi example, in detail.
September 25 (Tue), 2012 HW2 collected. HW3 assigned: Exercise 3.4[P] due 2012-10-02 (Tuesday). Note: you do not need to prove monotonicity of the heuristic, but you will not get full credit for a non-monotone heuristic. The midterm will be on 2012-10-04 (Thursday). Presentation assigned to the three honors students. See the Student Presentation entry on the course web site. Generation of heuristics from simplified (sub-)problems; presentation based on Pearl's 1983 _AI Magazine_ paper on the couse web site, using the 8-puzzle and STRIPS representation. Complexity of heuristics generated by problem relaxation: Valtorta's theorem (1984).
September 27 (Thu), 2012 HW2 returned. Reminder: HW3 due next Tuesday (2012-10-02); midterm next Thursday (2012-10-04). HW2 corrected in detail; Q&A. Iterative deepening DFS.
October 2 (Tue), 2012 Midterm will be on Thursday (2012-08-04); it will be open book and open notes. Solution of HW2 posted on blackboard. HW3 collected. Discussion of handouts from Ertel's and Luger's texbooks, with empirical results of A* on the 8-puzzle (Ertel) and examples of use of A* on the 8-puzzle. Ch.4 [P] ("Features and Constraints") started. Generate and test: a map-coloring problem solution in Prolog.
October 4 (Thu), 2012 MT1.
October 9 (Tue), 2012 MT1 returned. HW3 returned. HW3 partly corrected. The class a attended GQ Zhang's presentation starting at 1430: GQ Zhang of Case Western Reserve University will give a talk entitled "Ontology Driven Data Integration in Biomedicine" on Tuesday, October 9, 2012, in Swearingen 3A75, from 1430-1530 (2:30-3:30pm). Dr. Zhang is a Professor of Computer Science and Division Chief of Medical Informatics at Case Western Reserve University.
October 11 (Thu), 2012 HW4 assigned: Exercises 4.1 and 4.3 [P] due on Thursday, 2012-10-25. Discussion of HW3. Discussion of question 2 of MT1. Introduction to Ch.4 [P], "Features and Constraints." Using generate and test to solve constraint satisfaction problems: two Prolog examples: map coloring and the cryptoanalytic puzzle of exercise 4.10 [P]. Code from the textbook by Levesque used in CSCE 330 this semester. (See web site for that course for full reference.)
October 16 (Tue), 2012 Guest lecturer: Mr. Mohamed Sharaf. PR1 assigned, due 2012-10-30 See details on website. Videos by Doug Fisher of Vanderbilt University on Features and Constraints. (October 18: Fall break)
October 23 (Tue), 2012 PR1 due date changed to Thursday, 2012-11-01. HW4 due date changed to Tuesday, 2012-10-30. Features and constraints: search-based approach. The generalized arc-consistency (GAC) algorithm, with a small example.
October 25 (Thu), 2012 Example of the GAC algorithm. Variable elimination for the solution of Constraint Propagation (CP) problems. Presentation by student team composed of Jason Isenhower, Kenneth Denmark, and Ross Roessler.
October 30 (Tue), 2012 HW4 due date changed to Thursday, 2012-11-01. Q&A on HW4. A detailed example of use of variable elimination. Treewidth. Domain splitting.
November 1 (Thu), 2012 HW5: Exercises 4.4 and 4.11 [P] due on Tuesday, 2012-11-13. Propositional satisfiability as a CSP: (1) Variable elimination and the DP [1960] algorithm; (2) the bactracking DPLL [1962] algorithm. The following paper was used: Irina Rish and Rina Dechter. "Resolution versus Search: Two Strategies for SAT." _Journal of Automated Reasoning_, 24, 215--259, 2000. A link to an earlier edition of the paper is given in the "Student Presentations" section. The DP algorithm is called DR in the paper; the DPLL algorithm is called DP. These algorithms are briefly described in 4.6.1 and 4.12 [P]. The Local Search algorithm for CSPs (beginning of 4.8[P]) and corresponding applet: brief demo of the interface.
November 8 (Thu), 2012 (First class after fall break.) Extra credit assignment: complete the solution to exercise 4.3(c) [P] as started in class, due on Tuesday, November 13, 2012; see Lecture section of course website for the arc-consistency network from part (a). Discussion of HW4: constraint networks for 4.1(a-c) and 4.1(d-f). Solution of 4.1(c) using the AISpace Consistency-Based CSP Solver Tool. Constraint network for 4.3 (a); solution of 4.1(a) using the AISpace Consistency-Based CSP Solver Tool. Solution of 4.1(c) started in detail. More on stochastic search and the AIspace Stochastio Local Search CSP Solver Tool.
November 13 (Tue), 2012 Extra credit assignment collected. HW5 due date changed to Thursday, November 15. Comparing stochastic search algorithms for CSPs. Variable elimination for optimization: NSDP. Ch.4 [P] completed. Keith Haynes's presentation on learning features for computer vision.
November 15 (Thu), 2012 HW5 collected. HW_Extra (Extra Credit) returned. Important notice: Late homework and programs (beyond the normal "one class late" policy or special pre-existing arrangements) will be accepted for up to 50% credit. Keith Haynes's presentation on learning features and building classifiers for images completed. Ch.5 [P] ("Propositions and Inference") started: humans' and computers' views of semantics, propositional definite clauses.
November 20 (Tue), 2012 HW5 graded, but only some returned (at end of class). Ch.5 [P] ("Propositions and Inference") continued: soundness and completeness of proof procedures; bottom-up and top-down (SLD-resolution) proof procedures for definite clause logic. Proof of soundness and completeness of the bottom-up proof procedure.
November 27 (Tue), 2012 HW6 assigned: exercises 5.7, 5.8, and 5.9 [P] due December 6, 2012. HW5 returned. Ch.5 [P] continued: section 5.4 (knowledge representation issues) completed, with some AILog-2 examples; section 5.4 (proving by contradiction) started: integrity constraints and Horn clauses defined.
November 27 (Thu), 2012 PR2 assigned: exercise 5.6[P], due December 6, 2012. The exercise was worked out in class. A screenshot (or more than one) is required, to show that AILog (and SWI-Prolog) were installed and used. All graduate students have presentations assigned. At least one (Lingareddy and Nadipally) will be on Tuesday, December 4, 2012. The others will be on Thursday, December 6, 2012. Ch.5 [P] continued: consistency-based diagnosis and abductive diagnosis.
December 4 (Tue), 2012 Presentation on Natural Language Processing and the Sphinx System by Lingareddy and Nadipally. The bronchitis example of abductive (explanation-based diagnosis) with some discussion.
December 4 (Tue), 2012 HW6 and PR2 collected. Assignment: Read Sections 6.1-6.3 [P]. Be prepared to answer a question on Example 6.10. The final will be closed book and notes. The final from last semester is linked to the course web site. Presentations by McCaslin (on the Min-Conflict heuristic) and by the pair Almadhor and Helms (on Reiter's Diagnosis from First Principles, the original presentation of Consistency-Based Diagnosis).