CSCE 582 Spring 2010: Syllabus

The textbook is:

  • Jensen, Finn V. Bayesian Networks and Decision Graphs. New York: Springer-Verlag, 2007 (ISBN-10 0-387-68281-3; ISBN-13: 978-0-387-68281-5) (Approximately $72 at amazon.com. This text is referred to as [J07].) Other recommended books on the topic are:

    The main (approximately 80% of the time) instructional delivery strategy for this course is lectures. Discussions based on student presentations, videos, quizzes or in-class exercises, and a possible invited talk will make up the remaining 20% of time. The first day of classes is Friday, August 20, 2010. The last day to withdraw without failure is Thursday, October 7, 2010. The last day of classes is Friday, December 3, 2009. The final exam for the course is Saturday, December 11, 2010, at 1400 (2pm) in the classroom (SWGR 2A27). This is the regularly scheduled time for courses taught from 1325 to 1415 on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. (See the university exam schedule.) The syllabus is tentative.

    Week BeginsLecture Topics Readings
    1: August 20Probability and Reasoning Ch.1 [J07]; instructor's slides
    2: August 23, 25, 27Probability and Reasoning; Ch. 1 [J07]
    3: August 30, September 1, 3 Causal and Bayesian Networks Ch.2 [J07]
    4: September 8, 10 Causal and Bayesian Networks Ch.2 [J07]
    5: September 13, 15, 17 Building Models: Capturing the Structure and Determining the Conditional Probabilities Sections 3.1 and 3.2 [J07]
    6: September 20, 22, 24 Building Models: Capturing the Structure and Determining the Conditional Probabilities and Midterm Sections 3.1 and 3.3 [J07] and Notes on the Stratum Method
    7: September 27, 29; October 1Building Models: Advanced Modeling Methods and Special Features Sections 3.3 and 3.4 [J07]
    8: October 4, 6, 8Video on Probabilistic Relational Models (Daphne Koller) and Building Models: Advanced Modeling Methods and Special Features Video; Sections 3.3 and 3.4 [J07]
    9: October 11, 13Belief Updating in Bayesian Networks Ch.4 [J07]
    10: October 18, 20, 22Belief Updating in Bayesian Networks: Structure Based Algorithms Sections 4.1-4.6 [J07]
    11: October 25, 27, 29Belief Updating in Bayesian Networks: Structure Based Algorithms Sections 4.1-4.6 [J07]
    12: November 1, 3, 5Belief Updating in Bayesian Networks: Space-Time Tradeoff and Iterative Methods; Assignment of papers for graduate student presentations Sections 4.7-4.9 [J07]
    13: November 8, 10, 12 Graphical Languages for Decision Problems Ch.9 [J07]
    14: November 15, 17, 19 Topics in Decision Problems Sections of Chs. 10 and 11 [J07]
    15: November 22 Student Presentations TBA
    16: November 29; December 1, 3 Student Presentations (if needed); the EM Algorithm; Learning of BN Structure Topics from Chs. 5, 6, 7 [J07]