PSU CS441/541 Artificial Intelligence
Fall 2001
Course Syllabus

When: 1800-2130 (6:00-9:30PM) Thursdays
Where: PCAT 28
Who: Bart Massey <bart@cs.pdx.edu>
Office Hours: by e-mail appointment
CRN: 10720(441), 10744(541)
Assistant: Hongyon Suauthai

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.

Announcement: The course textbook will be the Nilsson textbook listed below. It is available at the bookstore (last I checked). I apologize for any confusion the textbook selection process has caused.

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.

Online: E-mail and Web

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. Unfortunately, because of a new ruling by the State and University about maintaining the confidentiality of student e-mail addresses, I will not be posting to this list.

I will be putting up a class Wiki shortly, and we will try that out as a medium for announcements, discussion, etc.

Readings

Required Text: (This is now definitively the course text: see the announcement above.)

Nils Nilsson
Artificial Intelligence: A New Synthesis
Morgan Kaufman 1998
ISBN 1-55860-467-7

Other Readings

[AdvS]

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Unpublished MS, 1999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