Artificial Intelligence I
CS3346A - Fall 2013
Course Outline
Course Description
Artificial Intelligence, often working behind the scene, appears
in many enterprise and office softwares, computer games,
Web applications,
Robotics, Google Cars, Amazon/Facebook recommendations, and so on.
The course will provide a comprehensive introduction
to Artificial Intelligence (AI). Solving real-world problems using
AI techniques will be emphasized throughout the course.
Prerequisites
Either (Computer Science 2210A/B and 2211A/B) or (Software Engineering
2203A/B, 2205A/B and 2250A/B); Computer Science 2209A/B,
or registration in the BESc program in Computer Engineering or
Software Engineering.
Unless you have either the requisites for this course or written special
permission from your Dean to enroll in it,
you will be removed from this course and it will be deleted from your record.
This decision may not be appealed. You will receive no adjustment to your
fees in the event that you are dropped from
a course for failing to have the necessary prerequisites.
Instructor
Dr. Charles Ling, Professor
Office: Middlesex College 374
Office hours: Tuesdays, 1:30 to 3:30 pm
Email: cling@csd.uwo.ca (best way to contact him)
Course Website
Check the Course Website regularly
(http://cling.csd.uwo.ca/cs346a)
Topics
Topics to be covered include problem solving by
search and heuristic search, computer games,
knowledge representation, inference and reasoning,
reasoning under uncertainty, optimal decision making,
and machine learning.
Textbook and Materials
Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach (3rd Ed.), by S. Russell
and P. Norvig, Prentice Hall, 2010.
URL of the textbook
TA and Office Hours
TBD
Student Evaluation
The students shall acquire solid knowledge and
understanding of the materials covered. They are expected to
answer concept questions,
formulate real-world problems into AI problems,
and perform AI algorithms on small problems
without reference in the exam.
They will utilize given codes or write new codes
to solve AI problems on computers in a series of assignments.
-
Four assignments, each worth 10%, 15%, 15%, and 25%, respectively.
Tentative due dates: 9/25, 10/16, 11/6, and 12/4.
Some are ``concept assignments''; some may require modifying
and/or writing programs to solve given problems.
Level of difficulty: medium.
Unless group work is specifically permitted,
the assignment must be of individual effort.
-
Midterm: in-class, two hours, 35%. Close book/notes,
and no electronic device is allowed.
Tentative Date: November 13.
(Note: there is no final exam for this course).
Late assignments cost 10% of the assignment per day.
After a week has passed from
the due-date no assignments will be accepted for marking.
Extensions may be granted by the course instructor.
This does not apply to the last assignment, which must be submitted
by the last day of the term.
If for any reason the assignment schedules cannot be adhered to,
the marks will be pro-rated.
Every effort will be made to have assignments marked and handed back within 3
weeks of the hand-in date, preferably sooner.
Midterm exam marks will be available within 3 weeks of the exam at the latest.
Academic Accommodation for Medical Illness
If you are unable to meet a course requirement due to illness or other serious
circumstances, you must provide valid medical or
other supporting documentation to your Dean's office as soon as possible and
contact your instructor immediately.
It is the student's responsibility to make alternative arrangements with their
instructor once the accommodation has
been approved and the instructor has been informed.
A student requiring academic accommodation due to illness should use the
Student Medical Certificate when visiting an off-campus
medical facility or request a Record's Release Form (located in the Dean's
Office) for visits to Student Health Services.
If the accommodation is approved by your Dean's office
and/or by the instructor,
your final mark will be re-weighted accordingly.
Students who are in emotional/mental distress should refer to Mental
Health@Western (http://www.uwo.ca/uwocom/mentalhealth/) for a complete list
of options about how to obtain help.
There will be no makeup Midterm Exam, except for students requesting a Special Midterm Exam for religious reasons. These students must have notified the course instructor and filed documentation with their Dean's office at least 2 weeks prior to the Midterm Exam.
If you miss the Midterm Exam for any other reason, follow the procedure for Academic Accommodation for Medical Illness given above. If accommodation
is approved by your Dean's office, your Final Exam mark will be reweighted
to include the weight of the Midterm Exam.
Accessibility Statement
Please contact the course instructor if you require material in an
alternate format or if you require any other arrangements to make this course more accessible to you. You may also wish to contact Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD) at 661-2111 x 82147 for any specific question regarding an accommodation.
Email Contact
We will occasionally need to send email messages to the whole class, or to
students individually. Email will be sent to the UWO email
address assigned to students by Information Technology Services (ITS), i.e.
your email address @uwo.ca. It is each student's
responsibility to read this email on a frequent and regular basis, or to have
it forwarded to an alternative email address if
preferred. See the ITS website for directions on forwarding email.
However, note that email at ITS (your UWO account) and other email providers
such as hotmail.com or yahoo.com establish quotas or limits
on the amount of space available to you. If you let your email accumulate
there, your mailbox may fill up and you may lose important
email from your instructors. Losing email is not an acceptable excuse for not
knowing about the information that was sent.
Ethical Conduct
Scholastic offences are taken seriously and students are directed to read the
appropriate policy, specifically, the definition
of what constitutes a Scholastic Offence, at the following Web site:
http://www.uwo.ca/univsec/handbook/appeals/scholoff.pdf
Plagiarism: Students must write their essays and assignments in their own
words. Whenever students take an idea, or a passage
from another author, they must acknowledge their debt both by using quotation
marks where appropriate and by proper referencing such
as footnotes or citations. Plagiarism is a major academic offence.
All assignments are individual assignments. You may discuss approaches to
problems among yourselves; however, the actual details of the work (assignment writing,
answers to concept questions, etc.) must be an
individual effort.
The standard departmental penalty for assignments that are judged to be the
result of academic dishonesty is, for the student's first
offence, a mark of zero for the assignment, with an additional penalty equal to
the weight of the assignment also being applied. You
are responsible for reading and respecting the Computer Science Department's policy on Scholastic Offences and Rules of Ethical Conduct.
The University of Western Ontario uses software for plagiarism checking.
Students may be required to submit their written work and
programs in electronic form for plagiarism checking.