CMSC671  Principles of Artificial Intelligence

CMSC671 Principles of Artificial Intelligence

Spring 1993

Instructor and Teaching Assistant

Instructor  Teaching Assistant
Tim Finin  Sivakumar Ravada
ECS 210  ECS 225F
410-455-3522  410-455-3092
finin@cs.umbc.edu  ravada@cs.umbc.edu
Office Hours: Tue/Thr 4:30 - 5:30 tbd

Text

We will be using the following:

• Artificial Intelligence Techniques in Prolog, Yoav Shoham, Stanford University. (336 pages)

• SICStus Prolog Uers’s Manual, Swedish Institute of Computer Science. (175 pages)

• SICStus Prolog Library Manual, Swedish Institute of Computer Science (67 pages).

These are available for purchase from the Computer Science Department, bound into two volumes for a combined cost of $30.00. You can, if you wish, buy just Artificial Intelligence Techniques in Prolog for $20.00 and just the two SCIStus documents for $15.00. You can buy these from Joyce Sause between 8:30am and 4:30pm in 210F ECS (phone: 4565-3522). Please bring a check or the exact amount in cash. If you are unable to pick these up at this time or have a friend pick them up for you, please see me about alternate arrangements.

We will be supplementing this material with The text will be with selected papers and articles over the course of the semester.

Tentative Schedule

# week of topic  comment
1  2/1  Introduction
2  2/8  Prolog
3  2/15 Prolog
4  2/22 Prolog
5  3/1  Search
6  3/8  Search
7  3/16 Spring Break
8  3/23 Meta Interpreters
9  3/29 Production Systems
10 4/5 Truth Maintenance
11 4/12 Uncertainty
12 4/19 Planning
13 4/26 Learning
14 5/3 Natural Language
15 5/10 Wrap up
16 5/17 Final 6pm Tue. 5/18 FINAL

Email

I would like to use email and news as much as possible for communication. Please mail me (finin@cs.umbc.edu) your email address as soon as possible. There is a local newsgroup courses.cs.671 that will be used to post announcements of interest to the entire class. I will assume that you read this newsgroup on a regular basis.

Grading

Course grades will be based on the following work. The final weighting may be changed slightly.

Homework  = 50%
Midterm Exam = 15%
Final exam  = 25%

As per University policy, incompletes will be granted only under extraordinary circumstances; students who are enrolled after April 16 (the last day to drop a class) should be prepared to receive a grade of A-F.

Homework

There will a number of short homework assignments – perhaps six. Each assignment will have a due date. Homework that is submitted by class time on the due date will receive an on-time bonus. Each homework carries a two-day grace period after the due date, during which it may be turned in with no penalty. No homework will be accepted after the grace period expires.

Most of the homeworks will be programming assignments. To receive more than token credit, a program must run.

Exams

There will be a midterm examination and a final examination. The material covered by the exams will be drawn from assigned readings in the text, from lectures, and from the homework. Material from the readings that is not covered in class is fair game, so you are advised to keep up with the readings.

Academic Honesty

Cheating in any form will not be tolerated. In particular, examinations are to be your own work— not your neighbor’s and not your crib sheet’s. You may discuss the programming assignments with anyone. However, any help you receive must be documented. At the beginning of your program, you must include a comment indicating the sources you used while working on it (excluding course staff and text), and the type of help you received from them. If you received no help, say so. Failure to include this comment at the top of your program will result in your program being returned ungraded.

The implementation of the programming assignments must be your own work. If you are stumped on a particular error, you may consult with someone else; however, if you consult with someone other than the instructor, the TA, or the consulting desk, you must place a comment in your code near the point of the error, stating the source and scope of the help you received. Reasonable help will not affect your grade; failure to cite your sources is academically dishonest, and will be dealt with harshly.