Purpose:

Prerequisite: We assume all students will know C/C++/JAVA. In addition, knowledge of Lisp, Prolog may also be useful. Students who are interested in the material but do not have the required prerequisite are encouraged to talk to the instructor.

Textbooks:

Course Outline

• search-based agents :  uninformed search, heuristic search,  constraint satisfaction, local/stochastic search (GSAT)
• logical agents:   "Wumpus world", building/using  logical knowledge bases, planning
• decision-theoretical agents:  probability, belief nets, influence diagrams, Markov decision process, dynamic belief/decision networks
• communicating agents: natural language and speech processing

Lecture Schedule

The numbers in [] brackets are the relevant chapters of the [Russell/Norvig] textbook.
 

Lecture	Topic	Readings
1	Introduction and Agents	[1], [2]
2	Problem Space	[3.1-3.2]
3	Blind Search	[3.3-3.6]
4	Heuristic search	[4.1-4.2]
5	Local Search and Stochastic Algorithm	[4.3-4.5]
6	Constraint Satisfaction 1	[5.1-5.2]
7	Constraint Satisfaction 2	[5.3-5.4]
8	Games and Adversarial Search	[6]
9	Prepositional Logic	[7.1-7.5], [7.7]
10	Predicate Logic, Unification and Resolution	[8]
11	Planning and Situation Calculus	[11]
12	Uncertainty and Probability Theory [updated Oct. 21]	[13]
13	Bayesian Network 1	[14]
14	Bayesian Network 2	[14]
15	Markov Model	[15.1-15.3]
16	Speech Recognition	[15.6]
17	Decision Theory 1	[16]
18	Decision Theory 2	[17]
19	Decision Theory 3	[17]
20	Natural Language Processing Overview	[22]
21	Syntax and Parsing	[22]
22	Information Retrieval	[23]
23	Statistical Machine Translation (by Colin Cherry)	[23]
24	Summary

 

Evaluation:

Late Policy: We will excuse a total of 4 late days, over all of the assignments.

(Eg, if Assignment #1 was due on Tuesday 9.30, and Assignment #4 was due on Tuesday 12.3, then you could hand-in #1 1 day late [by midnight Wednesday 10.1 ], and #4 3 days late [midnight 12.6], without penalty.)

All questions regarding the grading of assignments must be brought to the attention of the TA within two week of the results being made available.

Marking Policy

• To pass the course, your total score must not be less than 50%. Furthermore, your final examination score must not be less than 40%.
• Final letter grades from A to F (see http://www.grades.ualberta.ca for more information) will be assigned roughly in accordance with the historical distribution of similar courses at the University of Alberta.

Plagiarism

The final exam and the assignments in this course are to be completed on an individual basis. You may not submit any one else's work (in part or in entirety) with your name on it as if it is your own. This naturally exclude any code provided to your by the instructor or TAs. Notice that giving your work to others to copy is also considered to be an offence.

Deferred Examination

Code of Student Behavior
Appeals

Office Hours:

• 3:30-4:30pm, Tuesday and Thursday, or by appointment
• The TAs will be in the scheduled labs only the 1-week immediately before each assignment is due. (Eg, Assignment #1 is due on Tuesday Sept. 30, the TAs would be in the labs on Sept. 24, 26 and 29.)
  In addition, the lab will be staffed with a TA on any other lab time whenever at least 5 students specifically request it. Here, the students need to inform the TAs of this request by sending over a list of names (these people should view this as a firm commitment), and a specific starting time. (While this does need to be during the lab time, it does not have to be at the start of the lab session.) You need to send this to the TAs at least 36 hours in advance.
• Of course, both instructor and TAs are available for answering questions at any time by email; use c366 account .