Artificial Intelligence (CAP 4621) -- Fall 2002

Announcements

Old Announcements

12/17	Final numeric grades are posted.
12/9	Here are the solutions to the homework. Note that you are encouraged to bring calculators to the exam.
12/9	Project 2 will be returned in class on Wednesday. Brian will be at his regularly scheduled office hours on Thursday, Dec. 12 to discuss re-grade questions concerning project 2.
12/6	Topics for exam three (doc, html). "Homework" problems for fuzzy logic are posted here. These homework problems will not be collected, but you are encouraged to work them in preparation for the exam.
11/24	You may find a hastily constructed trace through the backward chaining algorithm to be useful.
11/22	Please be aware of the following error in the unify algorithm in the text. It would have you replace constants with variables. (See the errata page.): Page 303, Figure 10.3, line -1: Change "{x/var}" to "{var/x}" You will not be penalized for submission by Tuesday 11:59pm.
11/21	Answers to the example files are posted in the projects section. Example 17 has been simplified in order to avoid any chance of infinite recursion.
11/20	Changes to project two: Tier 3 is now extra credit. Tier 1, Tier 2, and Tier 3 are worth 40, 30, and 7 points respectively for a possible total of 77/70 points. You may submit your code by 11:59pm, Tuesday 11/26 and your report by 8:30am, Wednesday, ~~but you will receive a 15% late penalty. If you want to take this option, you will need to use the project identifier LATE_project_java or LATE_project_c with the turnin command.~~ No projects will be accepted after that time.
11/19	Eric is cancelling office hours for next Wednesday, November 27th. He'll have an extra set of office hours this Friday from 9:30am to 11:30am.
11/14	Homework 08 is posted. It's due next Wednesday before class.
11/6	We've posted the first installment of example files. Remember the filename convention: 00-19 Tier 1 20-39 Tier 2 40-59 Tier 3 60- Just for fun Check the directory occasionally for new and corrected files.
11/5	Brian is cancelling office hours on Tuesday, November 12th. He will be available Thursday, November 14th periods 6-8 (12:50-3:50pm).
11/5	Exam two topics as discussed in lecture
10/30	I posted the Nono Prolog example from lecture. As well as links to the Prolog tutorial referenced in lecture and the Otter homepage.
10/28	For homework seven, show all of your work. Particularly on problems two and four, show intermediate steps. You're welcome to turn in hand-written solutions to this assignment.
10/25	Homework seven is posted. It is due on Friday (11/1) before class.

Syllabus

Grades

Topics by Week

Projects

Homeworks

Instructor

Dr. Paul Gader (pgader@cise.ufl.edu)
Office: E356
Hours: MWF period 3 (9:35-10:25am)

TA's

Brian Simoneau (bsimonea@cise.ufl.edu)
Office: E309
Hours: TR periods 6-7 (12:50-2:45pm)
Eric Spellman (espellma@cise.ufl.edu)
Office: E432
Hours: W periods 8-9 (3:00-4:55pm), R periods 2-3 (8:30-10:25am)

Links

Course text: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach by Russel and Norving
This page links to the code which accompanies the book. It also has a whole bunch of AI links, plus errata and slides.
Logic programming systems
- Prolog tutorial used in class.
- The Otter theorem prover. Developed at Argonne National Laboratory.
Here is the analysis of the n=5 peg puzzle which we looked at in class. It includes the perecentage of winning states.
Pathfinding is an interesting application of AI which comes up in current games of the shooter and real-time strategy genres. It offers a particularly good example of using A*.
- Good article from GamaSutra -- requires registration (with email verification). Goes over A* and even the history heuristic (which was developed for and incorporated into Chinook.)
- Slides of talks from the Game Developers Conference 2002 -- look for the talks by Patrick Smith and Jaime Griessemer (developer for Halo)
- comp.ai.games FAQ
Chinook references
- Good description of the Chinook system leading up to the 1992 match for the championship.
  J. Schaeffer et. al. A World Championship Checkers Program (1992). Artificial Intelligence. vol. 53(2-3): 273-289.
- Improvements to Chinook leading up to and an account of the 1994 match which earned Chinook the title.
  J Schaeffer et. al. CHINOOK: The World Man-Machine Checkers Champion (1996). AI Magazine. vol. 17(1): 21-29.
- Play Chinook online (and have your hat handed to you).
- J. Schaeffer. The history heuristic and alpha-beta search enhancements in practice (1989). IEEE Transactions on PAMI. vol. 11(11): 1203-1212.
  Available via UF IP address on IEEE Xplore
- A. Samuel. Some studies in machine learning using the game of checkers. Computers and Thought, E Feigenbaum and J Feldman (eds.). McGraw-Hill, 1963: 71-105.
Lisp links
- Common Lisp: The Language, 2nd Edition (aka CLtL2 aka "The Aluminum Book"). Definitive. By a co-creator of the language.
- Common Lisp HyperSpec. ANSI's standard. Even more definitive.
- The Common Lisp Cookbook
- Lisp Primer. Excellent starting point. Lots of exercises.
- A good Lisp advocacy article by Peter Norvig (author of our text). It also includes a Lisp vs. the world speed comparison. Poke around his site for other Lisp articles and the text website for lots of Common Lisp code.
- Paul Graham is another vocal Lisp advocate. His text On Lisp is excellent (and free for download). He also has many articles on his site, including his story of how his start-up Viaweb succeeded (and ultimately became Yahoo! Stores) because "Lisp gave [him] a great advantage over competitors using less powerful languages."