PSU CS441/541 Artificial Intelligence
Fall 2000
Course Syllabus

When: 1800-2130 (6:00-9:30PM) Mondays
Where: PCAT 28
Who: Bart Massey <bart@cs.pdx.edu>
Office Hours:Thursdays 10:00-11:00, or by e-mail appointment
CRN: 10664(441), 10681(541)
Assistant:Qiong Chen, <qchen@cs.pdx.edu>

What: The catalog says

Artificial Intelligence (4/3)

Introduction to the basic concepts and techniques of artificial intelligence. Knowledge representation, problem solving, and AI search techniques. Program will be written in one of the AI languages. Prerequisites: CS 202, 252.

This course explores the ideas behind Artificial Intelligence, from philosophical underpinnings to the grungy details of coding.

Prerequisites:

• CS 200, 201, and 202, the programming series. The ability to write medium-sized programs in a reasonable programming language.
• CS 252, Computational Structures. The ability to construct and analyze data structures for organizing a wide variety of information.
• Basic reasoning skills, and the ability to quickly read and understand complex material.
• Sincere interest in the subject area.

E-mail

There are two special e-mail addresses associated with the course. Mail to <cs541@cs.pdx.edu> will contact myself and your teaching assistant personally: use this for homework submissions, class questions, etc. <cs541-discuss@cs.pdx.edu> is the course mailing list (using majordomo). Subscribe to this by sending an e-mail message to majordomo@cs.pdx.edu with subscribe cs541-discuss in the body, and use it for class discussions and the like.

Readings

Required Text:

Matt Ginsberg
Essentials of Artificial Intelligence
Morgan Kaufman 1993
ISBN 1-55860-221-6

Other Readings

[AdvS]

Dr. Richard Korf
Heuristic Search, chapter 7
Unpublished MS, 1999
(class handout)

[CSP]

Dr. Edward Tsang
Principles Of Constraint Satisfaction, chapter 1
Out-of-print MS, 1993
(class handout)

Links

• A nice introductory article on SAT.
• A great source of information on Satisfiability, including problems and solvers.

Coursework

The coursework will consist of a series of projects, largely implementing various ideas from the text, culminating in a final larger project. (Those experimenting with departmental computers must follow the ``safety guidelines''.) There will be midterm and final examinations.

Academic Honesty

If I catch you plagiarizing any material, I will do what I can to end your academic career. Plagiarism is using anyone else's works, writings, or ideas without explicitly giving them credit. If you get code, ideas, or text from a fellow student, put their name on it so that we both know what happened.

Course Schedule