Weekly Work Schedule

• Discussion of possible projects and course mechanics.
  You need to select your group members at this time. To help find group members you may use the course email address is: 36485-F05@classes.uci.edu. For example, you might say what you are interested in working on. Also you can email me (kibler@ics.uci.edu) with suggested projects.
• By October 10, noon, everyone should send me and the TA a description of their project. Also you should contact the TA to set up a meeting with him.
• By the fifth week, groups will make a short power point presentation of the goal of their project to the entire class. Here one only talk about what they hope to achieve. Also, by this time, students will submit their power point slides to the TA to be displayed on a class website.
• Sixth week. Hand in a design document. Identification of Major objects, methods and assignment of objects to individuals. Include a screen-shot of the GUI interface, as appropriate. Your code should be documented only at very high level. However one requirement is who was responsible for the initial version of a particular object. Anyone else who changes the code should have a short description of their contribution.
• Week 10: Very short in-class power-point presentation of the main thing that you accomplished or learned. Also during this week there will be a poster session where you will demonstrate your program. You should also have a full Power-point presentation which you put on your website. In most cases, your code will be executable from your website.
• Final: At the final time, or before, your are required to hand in a final report and the your code. The final report includes the background material, what you accomplished, what difficulties you faced, and an evaluation of the project. This should be about 8-10 pages long.

  Examples of Project Description

  
  Projects comes in two flavors: POPs (Problem-Oriented Projects) and MOPs (Method-Oriented Projects). Most will likely choose a POP.
  • Team Members: names with email addresses
    Project: POP: Othello Game Player
    Method(s): Alpha-beta search
    Evaluation: Program will play against itself using various heuristic and depth of search
    Very High Level Design (Major Pieces): Gui interface, Game Manager, Game Player
  • Team Members:...
    Project: POP: Bridge Bidder
    Method: Forward Chaining Expert System
    Evaluation: Problems from a standard text
    Very High Level Design: Gui, Rule Interpreter, Execution Explainer
  • Team members:...
    Project: MOP: Improved Decision Tree Algorithm
    Method: Replace entropy by better measure
    Evaluation: Compare with other decision tree learning algorithm and maybe other learning algorithms. Use some form of out-of-sample testing.
    Very High Level Design: Gui, Decision tree learner, Experimenter or evaluator
  In general evaluation can be done in several ways: comparison with existing programs, comparison with people or comparison with some standard, such as defined in a text.

  Example of Web Site

  1. Project: A Program to Invent Mathematics
  2. Team Members: Al Einstein (aeinstein@yahoo.com) and Fred Gauss (fgauss@yahoo.com)
  3. Abstract: Starting with no knowledge the program uses a genetic-neural net algorithm to construct mathematical conjectures. These conjectures are extensively tested and then proven.
  4. Background: TBD
  5. Code: TBD
  6. Presentation: TBD (about 12-15 slides)

  Important Dates (UPDATED)

  1. Week 2: Hand in project team, description and website.
  2. Week 3: Hand in background/history on project. This should be added to website. Present in class
  3. Weeks 4&5, 6&7, 8&9 Meet with tas to give progress reports.
  4. Week 5: Hand in Design document. High level design with objects assigned to people.
  5. Week 10: Poster presentations of project plus demonstrations of program. Hand in a copy of your power-point presentation, which should also be added to your web site.
  6. Final: hand in final report and code.