CSCE476/876, Spring 2002: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

Prereq:         CSCE310, Data structures and algorithms.

Course description: Introduction to the basic principles, techniques and tools now being used in the area of machine intelligence.  Lecture topics will include problem solving, knowledge representation and reasoning, search, expert systems, and planning and action.  More advanced topics may be included depending on class interests and performance.  Programming will be done in Common Lisp using Allegro Common Lisp (ACL) and its programming environment.

Time:           Monday, Wednesday, Friday, from 11:30 p.m. to 12:20 p.m.

Place:           Ferguson, Room 111.

Instructor:   Prof.  Berthe Y. Choueiry
                      Room 104, Ferguson Hall,
                      choueiry@cse.unl.edu, tel: (402)472-5444.
                      Office hours:  Mon 4:45-5:45 p.m., Fri 12:30-13:30 pm, or by appointment.

TAs:            Mr. Daniel Buettner (Dan).
                     email: buettner@cse.unl.edu
                     Office hours in Room 3, Building 501.
                     Mon 1.30-2.30 pm;  Wed 4.00-5.00 pm.

                     Mr. Lin XU.
                     email: lxu@cse.unl.edu
                     Office hours in Room 3, Building 501.
                     Tue 3:30-4.30 pm (updated);  Fri 12:30-2.00 pm.
 

Class schedule: the page will be regularly updated. Check it out often for reference to required and recommended reading material, homework texts, and announcements.

Textbooks (check the bookstore):

• Required: Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach (AIMA), by Russell & Norvig.
• Required: LISP, 3rd Edition  (LWH).  Winston & Horn.
• Optional (recommended): Common Lisp, the Language. Guy Steele.

• Lectures by instructor, 3 times per week.
• The workload consists of:
• required and recommended reading (as indicated in the Class schedule): AIMA (textbook) will be followed in a more or less linear fashion.  The content of the course will be dynamically adapted to students performance. Chapters to be studied may encompass:  Chapter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (partially), 6, 7, 9,  10 (quickly), 11, 13, 14, 15, and time permitting, 18, 19, 22, 24, 26, and/or 27.   Sections from these and other chapters may be dropped or added during the course.  Regularly check the class schedule.
• programming, theoretical, and library-search assignments:  Programming assignments must be done in Common Lisp (advice: use Allegro Common Lisp on Linux) and turned in using the UNIX handin program on cse.unl.edu.  Pen+paper assignments must be given to the instructor in class. All assignments (including programming and pen+paper assignments)  must be turned in before the lecture on the due date. Late homework are subject to a 20% deduction per day (including week-ends), any second after the due date counts as an entire day.  Students are kindly requested to indicate how much time they approximately spend on each exercise; this information will be aggregated and used for planning purposes, it does not affect grading and the evaluation of individuals.
• surprise quizzes: There will be a surprise quiz along the semester  (with a frequency inversely proportional to students'  attendance).  Quizzes will address all material covered during the lectures and/or by the required reading.  No books or personal notes are allowed during the quizzes, unless explicitly specified. Quizzes cannot be made up.
• tests: There will be a pre-test, a mid-term  and a final.  Tests cannot be taken in advance.  Tests cannot be made up except by instructor's permission.
• It is the student's responsibility to ensure an account on the CSE PCs from which Linux (+ xemacs, ACL) can be executed. Unless specified, tests are closed-book exams. Students may  however use a one 81/2"x11" sheet as crib sheet.  Students may use both sides of the sheet and write as small as they like.  Crib sheets must be handwritten.  No photocopies, typewritten paper, electronic/mechanical reproductions will ever be allowed.  Further, students must handin their crib sheet with their exam.
• Discussions among students, instructor, and TA are encouraged.  Homework however are a strictly individual activity: no sharing is permitted (unless when specified by instructor).  Unethical behavior will be heavily sanctioned (e.g., a null grade on the task).
• Always acknowledge any help received from other individuals.
• Always fully reference material used (e.g., encyclopedia, book, paper, journal, web site).
• Attendance is not mandatory.  But students are responsible for the material covered and announcements (such as lists of terms for glossary) made during the class.  Also, there will be surprise quizzes.

• The grades are partitioned as follows for undergraduate students:
• Pre-test:  5%
• (Surprise) quizzes: 15%
• Homework: 30% (Programming assignments will be graded as follows: 70% for correctness, 10% for programming style, and 20% for documentation.)
• Midterm: 25%
• Final: 25%

• A bonus will be awarded to students who attend all lectures.
• Students who return every Monday, before class a glossary of terms listed in handouts will be credited for up to 10% bonus, computed proportionally to the list of terms they return.   Rules for glossary:
• Students will be have to build an incremental and alphabetically sorted glossary of important terms.
• Terms to be included are the ones listed in the handouts distributed in class or sent my email.
• A glossary entry can be filled with: (1) its definition in AIMA, (2) its definition from another AI textbook or dictionary, or (3) the student's own interpretation.
• All terms encountered during a week are due as a weekly glossary the following Monday.
• At the end of the course, the full alphabetically sorted glossary is due. (Hint:  choose a text editor that can sort entries alphabetically.)

• AI
• Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach (AIMA), by Russell & Norvig.
• Artificial Intelligence, 3rd Edition.  Winston. ISBN 0201533774.
• Essentials of Artificial Intelligence. Ginsberg. ISBN 1-558s60-22-6.  Call number Q335.G55 1993.
• Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis. Nilsson. ISBN 1-55860-535-5.  Call number Q335.N496 1998.
• Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming. Norvig. ISBN 1-55860-191-0. Call number QA76.6.N687.
• LISP
• LISP, 3rd Edition. Winston & Horn. ISBN 0-201-08319-1.
• ANSI Common Lisp, Paul Graham. ISBN 0-13-370875-6.
• Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming. Norvig. ISBN 1-55860-191-0. Call number QA76.6.N687.
• Specific topics
• Foundations of Constraint Satisfaction by Edward Tsang.
• A mathematical introduction to logic by Enderton, Herbert B, CALL NO. QA9 .E54 1972.

• On-line tutorials:
• UT San Antonio Lisp tutorial
• Marc Schwarz's Common Lisp tutorial at NYU
• Colin Allen & Maneesh Dhagat Lisp Primer
• Online Tutorial to Common Lisp , Adaptive Remote Tutor.
• An Introduction and Tutorial for Common Lisp, by Marty Hall
• A few good examples on how to create and manipulate classes.  Catch of Jason Steele (Spring'2000).
• References:
• Usenet newsgroup: comp.lang.lisp
• Contributed by Eric Moss: Parenthetically Speaking (with Kent M. Pitman)
• LISP -- a Language for Internet Scripting and Programming
• Free copy of ACL5.0.1.
• Franz Inc. by David Cooper Jr.: Understanding Common Lisp (Basic Lisp techniques, pdf document).
• Common Lisp, The Language, Second Edition. Guy L. Steele, Jr.  Digital Press, ISBN: 1555580416 (will be made available soon at LL.)
• Allegro Common Lisp (ACL) online documentation: Introduction, Contents, Index, Foreign function interface
• Successful Lisp: How to Understand and Use Common Lisp, by David B. Lamkins
• The 10 Most Important Things to Know About Lisp, by Heinrich Taube
• COMMON LISP: An Interactive Approach, by Stuart C. Shapiro
• Common Lisp Hyper Spec, The very definition of class, by  The Harlequin Group Limited.
• Overview of language constructs, by Donald Ross
• Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation, by David S. Touretzky
• LISP FAQ by  Mark Kantrowitz.
• ... and much more from the Association of Lisp Users' page.
Finally, a touch of poetry: Only LISP Can Make a Tree.

• The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, call number BF311 .M556 1999, LIB USE ONLY.
• Encyclopedia of artificial intelligence, 1992, SECOND EDITION,call number Q335 .E53, LIB USE ONLY.
• Section on "General AI Information" in "AI Resources."
• Dictionary of Algorithms, Data Structures, and Problems
• Web search engines (Altavista, etc.)

Countless web resources and, importantly, pointers from colleagues and other similar courses. Particular thanks to Rina Dechter (UCI), Marie desJardins (UMBC), Boi V. Faltings (EPFL), and Daphne Koller (Stanford University).