Teaching Staff

• Instructor: Dan Frost frost@ics.uci.edu Office: Bren Hall 5058 (949) 824-1588 (Why UCI? 1 Luv!). Office hours Wednesdays, 10:00 - 12:00
• Teaching Assistant: Nathan Sutter    Office hours Mondays and Wednesdays 4:00-5:00 in Bren Hall 4059.
• Readers: Julian Yarkony and Tijana Milenkovic

The Othello Tournament

• Preliminary Tournament
  • AIs 111 and 183 didn't compile
  • Log of the main preliminary tournament AI 149 created two classes with names not beginning with AI149; I didn't catch them so the AI ran OK. But for the actual tournament, that will result in disqualification. AI 117 threw NullPointerExceptions. All other AIs behaved well.
  • Due to scheduling vagaries, AI187 didn't play in the first preliminary tournament, so I created a second mini-prelim for it to participate in, here is that log.
• Tournament
  • First stage went well; no disqualifications; all AIs advance to stage 2. Log of stage 1
  • Log of stage 2
  • Log of stage 3
  • Log of stage 4 These games had a different initial board: four pieces in the center (as usual), two whites above two blacks. Congratulations to all AIs and their creators.

  Scores

  • Project 1 (Othello)
  • Project 2 (Decision Tree)
  • Score totals as of 3/20
  Textbook: Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach, Second edition. I'll be using some of the authors' slides in my lectures; they are available at aima.eecs.berkeley.edu/slides-pdf/.

  Additional Readings: Several additional readings, short, interesting, and required, will be assigned.

  • The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks.
  • Computing Machinery and Intelligence, Alan Turing.

  Tests: A brief study guide to the midterms and final:

  • Midterm 1: Will cover chapters 3 (particularly 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 and 3.4), 4 (primarily 4.1, 4.2, and hill-climbing in 4.3), and 6 (but not 6.5 and 6.6).
  • Midterm 2: Will cover chapter 18 (primarily 18.3 and not 18.4 or 18.5), section 20.5, chapter 7 (but not the material on resolution on pp. 213-217, and not 7.7), and the Oliver Sacks essay. Material from Midterm 1 may re-appear as well. You may enjoy some previous midterms with solutions: Winter, 2005, Spring, 2005 questions 1 and 2, Spring, 2005 questions 3 through 5.
  • Final Exam: will cover all sections and chapters identified for the two midterms, plus the following:
    • chapter 8 (but not the details of The electronic circuits domain);
    • chapter 13 (but not 13.7);
    • chapter 14, sections 14.1, 14.2 (but not "A method for constructing Bayesian networks"), and 14.3 (but not "Bayesian nets with continuous variables").
    • All of Computing Machinery and Intelligence by Alan Turing.
    You may enjoy some previous finals, one with solutions: Winter, 2005, Spring, 2005 (just the first five questions)
  Workload: Nine homeworks (10 points each), two midterms (100 points each), a final exam (150 points), two programming projects (100 points each), and one tournament (100 points), for a maximum 740 points. In computing the overall score, if your score on one or more of the following is below the class median — your first midterm; your second midterm; your first project; your second project; your tournament — I will replace the lowest one by the class median. What is the reason for giving you a break on one low score? It means you aren't heavily penalized if you are sick or have an important commitment outside of class and have to miss a project or a midterm. I don't have to determine whether an excuse is valid or not. It allows me to maintain a strict "no extensions or make-ups" policy and still be fair and reasonable.

  Grading: I will grade on a curve, as follows: the students in the top eighth of the class (based on total points), will get a grade of A; second eighth, A-; third eighth, B+; fourth eighth, B; fifth eighth, B-; sixth eighth, C+; seventh eighth, C or C-; bottom eighth, C- or below. I reserve the right to adjust these fractions slightly.

  Attendance: Required at lectures. I may take role occasionally (within the first two minutes of lecture or the last two minutes); absence will result in the loss of two points. I reserve the right to require attendance at discussion session, but that's unlikely.

  Handouts and references:

  • If you want to play Othello on the computer with either a friend or the computer as opponent, here's a nice Othello applet
  • Is your new AIM pal an artificial intelligence program?    also, see SmarterChild.
  • Russell and Norvig's notes on chapter 4 (used in my 1/18 lecture)
  • Russell and Norvig's notes on chapter 18 (used in my 1/25 and 1/28 lectures)
  • Russell and Norvig's notes on chapter 7 (used in my 2/11 lecture)
  • Russell and Norvig's notes on chapter 13 (used in my 2/22 lecture)
  • Russell and Norvig's notes on chapter 14 (used in my 3/3 lecture)
  • The UCI Machine Learning Repository
  • Perceptron Learning spreadsheet (pdf)
  • Notes on a propositional KB for the Wumpus world. (used in my 2/13 lecture)
  • A key to Midterm 2 (pdf)
  • Rubrics for homework 1, homework 2, homework 3, homework 4, homework 5, homework 6, homework 7, homework 8, and homework 9.

  Communication: Read your UCI email account at least once a day. Refer to the course web page, http://www.ics.uci.edu/~frost/cs171 occasionally. If you send me email, please include "CS 171" in the subject line, and your name and student ID in the body of the message.

  Schedule and homeworks:

  Week	Topics / Chapters	Homework	Other Signs of Human Intelligence
  1	Introduction, Search / 1, 2, 3	1 due 1/11
  2	Game Playing / 6	2 due 1/18
  3	Informed Search / 4, 5	3 due 1/25
  4	Learning from Observations / 18	4 due 2/1	Othello Project due Wednesday, January 30
  5	Neural Networks / 20.5	5 due 2/8	Midterm Wednesday, February 6
  6	Propositional Logic / 7	6 due 2/15
  7	First Order Logic / 8, 9	7 due 2/22	Decision Tree Project due Wednesday, February 20
  8	Handling Uncertainty / 13	8 due 2/29	Midterm Wednesday, February 27
  9	Probabilistic Reasoning / 14, 16.1	9 due 3/7
  10	Philosophical Foundations / 26, 27		Othello Tournament starting Friday, March 14
  March 21	FINAL EXAM 1:30 - 3:30

  Cheating: Be familiar with ICS policy and the definition of cheating. Instances of academic dishonesty will be reflected in the final grade because dishonesty devalues the learning experience for the whole class. Whether you turn in someone else's work as your own, or if you help someone else do so, a single act of cheating will result in a grade of F for the quarter. However, you are permitted to discuss and work on the homework assignments with other students, as long as each student writes up his or her homework independently. On the programming projects, you should not look at anyone else's code, or allow anyone else to look at your code. I will use MOSS to compare all source code.

  Special Accommodations: Any student who feels he or she may need an accommodation based on the impact of a disability should contact me privately to discuss his or her specific needs. Also contact the Disability Services Center at (949) 824-7494 as soon as possible to better ensure that such accommodations are implemented in a timely fashion.