Fall 2007

In this course, various topics in AI (agents, problem solving by searching, logic and reasoning, planning, probability and utility theories, learning, etc.) are covered in depth, and various application areas are introduced (speech recognition, natural language understanding, robotics,...) shortly. The course is intended mainly for 4th and 3rd year engineering student, as well as interested graduates. At the end of the course, there is a project where students are expected to write a substantial program, such as a backgammon or chess player, or research and implement an optimization algorithm on a difficult problem.

Students must be comfortable in programming (CS 201 level programming is required), even though the basic components of most of the projects will be given (board class, neural network program, ...).

At the end of the course, the students should be able to: know about definitions and topics in AI and be able to design and program an intelligent agent from start to finish (the knowledge base, the inference mechanism, searching, handling uncertainty,...).

Instructor:

Berrin Yanıkoğlu

Office: MDBF 2056

Office Hours: Monday 4:00-5:00pm or by email appointment

Lecture hours: Monday 2:40-3:30 L045

Tuesday 10:40-12:30 L045

Textbook:

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (AIMA), by Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig., 2^nd edition.

I will give homeworks from the 2^nd edition. First edition is simpler but mostly adequate (it is your responsibility to check the differences with the 2^nd edition).

Link to the 2^nd edition web page, where you can find many useful information, also points to the 1^st edition web page:

http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/

Assistant: TBA

Exams:

Those who misses a midterm for anything short of a serious condition should expect a makeup at least as difficult (since making something equally hard is impossible, so I will err on the difficult side! ), or an oral exam, or risking to pass with fewer grades. Specifically:

o Those who misses the one of the midterms will have their final exam weight increase (note that this is a serious risk, as the final exams are usually more difficult as they cover more topics). No medical reports requested.

o Those who misses two midterms even with medical reports automatically get an F.

o Those who misses the final exam will have a makeup on the next day ONLY IF they have a serious and fully documented excuse (medical emergency, death in immediate family) and advance warning. Mere sickness and dubious reports not accepted for the final (unlike midterms where I have not asked a report). The makeup may be an oral exam depending on the number of students needing a makeup and in general dont forget that they are more difficult compared to rgular exam (can’t make them exactly equal, so we will err on the more difficult side side, also because you will have the advantage of having seen the exam questions, ).

Homeworks: Read the Homework policy.

Grading:

Homeworks and Project (10%) + Midterm I and II (30% each) + Final (30%)

To pass the course you grade as calculated above must be 40 35 and over.