CS 141 Introduction to AI Greenwald

TBA

Spring 2009

Contents

    1  Overview

    2  Staff

    3  Syllabus

    4  Assignments
                Grading Projects
                Late Policy
                Extensions

    5  A Paper-Free Environment
                Handing In Assignments

1  Overview

Welcome to CS 141! We’re so pleased that you are interested in artificial intelligence (AI).

In this course, you will be exposed to the fundamentals of AI, and its limitations, by working through numerous examples of how, when, and where to apply AI techniques. Application areas include natural-language processing, machine vision, machine learning, and intelligent web agents. Example tasks range from game playing to transportation planning. Core topics include search and optimization, knowledge representation, logical inference, and probabilistic modeling and inference.

Here are some relevant logistics:

Course Number: CS 141
Course Prerequisites: CS 16, 18 or 19 and CS 22
Course Time & Location: Tu/Th 10:30-11:50, CIT 219
Course Website: http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs141/
Optional Textbook: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, by Russell & Norvig

2  Staff

Professor	Amy Greenwald	amy@brown.edu
Head TA	Alex Franks	afranks@cs.brown.edu
Grad TA	Eric Sodomka	sodomka@cs.brown.edu
UTA	Andy Miller	amiller@brown.edu
UTA	Sam Potasznik	spotaszn@cs.brown.edu
UTA	Alex Tuteur	atuteur@cs.brown.edu
UTA	Zac Townsend	ztownsen@cs.brown.edu

Please email general questions about the course to cs141tas@cs.brown.edu.
TA office hours will be posted on the course website in short order.

Here is some relevant information about the Professor:

Office Number: 383
Office Phone: 863–7678
Office Hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 12–1
URL: http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/amy/

3  Syllabus

What is AI?
Week 1	1/19	Intelligent Agents
3lSearch
Week 2	1/26	Blind and Heuristic Search
Week 3	2/2	Heuristic and Local Search
Week 4	2/9	CSPs and Satisfiability
Week 5	2/16	ILPs and Adversarial Search
3lLogic
Week 6	2/23	Propostional Logic
Week 7	3/2	First-Order Logic
Week 8	3/9	Planning
3lProbability
Week 9	3/16	Probability and Utility Theories
Week 10	3/23	Spring Break
Week 11	3/30	Bayesian Networks
Week 12	4/6	Markov Decision Processes (MDPs)
Week 13	4/13	MDPs & Reinforcement Learning
Week 14	4/20	Partially-Observable MDPs & Markov Games

4  Assignments

There will be four projects and (roughly) seven homeworks in this course. Two weeks will be allotted for each project, and either one or two weeks for each homework, depending on scheduling and topic. All homeworks will be posted on Mondays at (roughly) 5:01 pm and will be due the following Monday at (promptly) 5pm.

All projects will be posted on Thursdays (roughly) at noon and will be due on Thursdays (promptly) at 12:00 a.m. To be on the safe side, the TAs recommend handing in each project on the Wednesday prior to its due date by 11:59 p.m. Projects must be pair-programmed, each one with a different partner. Please refer to the pair programming handout for information about this practice.

There will not be a midterm, but there will be a take-home final exam.

The tables below outline the homework and project schedules, and the grading breakdown.

Homeworks

Out	In	Topic
1/26	2/9	Blind and Heuristic Search
2/9	2/23	Local Search and CSPs
2/23	3/2	ILPs and Game Search
3/2	3/9	Propositional Logic
3/9	3/16	First-Order Logic
3/16	4/6	Bayesian Networks
4/6	4/20	MDPs and RL

Projects

Out	In	Topic
1/29	2/12	Slide
2/19	3/5	Word
3/12	4/2	Chips
4/9	4/23	Blackjack

Grading

Homeworks:	45%
Projects:	35%
Final Exam:	20%

Grading Projects

In all CS 141 projects, the majority of your grade will depend on your program’s functionality, with the parts of the assignment that are more difficult weighted more heavily. But some percentage of your grade will also be reserved for style. You should always:

• Spend time trying to find the clearest solution, because clearer solutions usually result in shorter code that is easier to read.

• Add comments to any code that would otherwise be unclear.

As a way to predict your style grade, think about the TA grading your project. The TA should never be in doubt about what a section of code is doing or how it works.

Late Policy

Each student may opt to hand in one homework and one project one day late without any penalty. Otherwise, homeworks and projects will be penalized 50% per day late.

Extensions

A request for an extension must be made to the professor at least 24 hours before the due date. Extensions are only granted for good reasons. Illness (with a note from health services) is always a good reason. Please do not compromise your health to finish an assignment.

5  A Paper-Free Environment

Out of deference to the humble trees that populate our picturesque Rhode Island landscape, this course is paperless. All assignments will be posted on the website in pdf format, and you are expected to turn in assignments electronically. If you prefer to have a hard copy of some assignment, you may print it yourself. Printing CS-related materials in the Sun Lab is “free.”¹

Your code should be submitted in plain-text: e.g., as Java files (.java).

Non-code solutions must be submitted in a LATEX file (.tex). LATEX is a powerful typesetting system that you will learn to use during the first week of the semester. All the documents for the course (including this one) have been typeset in LATEX. One of the great strengths of LATEX is its ability to typeset mathematical equations. It is also easily extensible.

As an example, LATEX typsets this expression

\[\sum_{i=0}^{\infty} (\tfrac{1}{2})^i = 2\]

like this:

We hope this policy will be convenient for both you and us. We welcome your feedback.

Handing In Assignments

All assignments (homeworks, projects, and exams) should be submitted using the cs141-handin script. You are required to submit both editable and viewable copies of your work. For code, the Java files serve both purposes. For LATEX, you should sumbit both the source file and a pdf.

To run the handin script from a computer in the CS department:

1. Change to the assignment directory (for example, if you are turning in Homework 1, the directory should be /u/yourlogin/course/cs141/homeworks/hw01.

2. Run cs141-handin . For example,

   cs141-handin hw01
   cs141-handin slide
   cs141-handin final

This will hand in the contents of the directory for assignment .