CMSC421

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

Fall 2002

Course Time and Place: Tu, Th 9:30 - 10:45 CSI 1122

Professor:
Lise Getoor
AVW 3205
getoor@cs.umd.edu
office hours: Tu 3:00-5:00PM and by appt.

Teaching Assistant:
Grecia Lapizco-Encinas
AVW 1151
glapizco@cs.umd.edu
office hours: MW 10AM - 11:30AM

Prerequisites: Students should have a strong programming background. Familiarity with algorithms will also be useful A C or better in CMSC 330 (Organization of Programming Languages) and CMSC 351 (algorithms) or CMSC 420 (Data Structures). Prerequisites will be enforced.

Text: Russell and Norvig, Artificial Intelligence, A Modern Approach. Prentice-Hall, 1995. There will be supplementary reading materials as well.

Mailing list: There is a class mailing list, cmsc421@cs.umd.edu. Join the mailing list by going to
http://www.cs.umd.edu/mailman/listinfo/cmsc421

Workload: There will be an in-class midterm and final. There will be both homework assignments and programming assignments. The work load for this course is high.

Grading (tentative):

Class Participation/Exercises
participation in discussion and in-class exercises
5%
Homeworks
four to five written homeworks
20%
Programming
programming exercises and one programming project
25%
Midterm
Thu October 17 in class (tentative)
20%
Final
Tue December 17 8AM - 10AM
30%

Homeworks: There will be four to five written homeworks. Students will be allowed to work together on written homeworks. Students may discuss the homework to understand the problem and reach a solution. However, each student must write down the solution independently, and without referring to written notes from the joint session. In other words, each student must understand the solution well enough in order to reconstruct it by him/herself. In addition, each student should write on the problem set the set of people with whom s/he collaborated. This method as an experiment for CSMC421. If we find that people's homeworks are suspiciously similar (indicating copying as opposed to collaborative work), we will simply stop the experiment and disallow collaboration for the entire class.

Important note on the honor code: We occasionally reuse problem set questions from previous years' courses, we expect the students NOT to copy, refer to, or even look at the solutions in preparing their answers. It will be considered an honor code violation to intentionally refer to previous year's solutions (or other solutions available on the web) The purpose of problem sets in this class is to help you think about the material, not just give us the correct answers.

Late Homeworks: Homeworks are due at the start of class on their due date. A grading penalty will be applied to late homeworks. Recognizing that students may face unusual circumstances and require some flexibility in the course of the quarter, each student will have a total of seven free late (calendar) days to use as s/he sees fit. Once these late days are exhausted, any homework turned in late will be penalized at the rate of 20% per late day (or fraction thereof). Under no circumstances will a homework be accepted more than a week after its due date. Late days are from noon to noon. Late homeworks should be handed in to the TA. If not available (e.g., on weekends), write the date and time on the assignment and push it under Prof. Getoor's door. It is a honor code violation to write down the wrong time.

Exams. There will be a midterm exam and a final exam. Both will be open book and open notes The midterm is in class and is tentatively scheduled on Thursday, October 17. The final exam will be Tuesday, Dec 17, 8:00am to 10:00am.

There will be no makeup exams. To get credit for a missed exam, you will need a valid medical excuse. This means an official letter (including the dates of incapacitation for your illness), either from your private physician or from the Social Services department in Module II of the University Health Center. If you have a valid medical excuse, your grade will be based on your performance on the other exam.

REGRADING ISSUES: The majority of the grading will be done by the TA. If you think there has been a mistake in grading your homework or exam, please submit a regrade request explaining in writing, precisely and consicely, the grading error that has occurred, to the TA. Such request must be made no later than 1 week after the material in question was returned to the class. Any request to have an assignment regraded may result in the entire assignment in question being regraded, possibly resulting in a loss of points.

ACADEMIC INTEGRITY:.

In this course you are responsible for both the University's Code of Academic Integrity and the University of Maryland Guidelines for Acceptable Use of Computing Resources.

Any evidence of unacceptable use of computer accounts or unauthorized cooperation on tests, quizzes, or projects will be submitted to the Student Honor Council, which could result in an XF for the course, suspension, or expulsion from the University. NOTE SPECIFICALLY: projects are to be done INDIVIDUALLY. Working IN ANY WAY with another student will be considered a violation and WILL BE REPORTED to the Honor Council.

Automatic tools may be used to compare your project solution to that of other current or past students in this class, so it will be very difficult to hide any collaboration. The risk of getting caught is too high, and the standard penalty is way too high (grade of XF).