2007/08 Catalog data Presentation of artificial intelligence as a coherent body of ideas and methods to acquaint the student with the basic programs in the field and their underlying theory. Students will explore this through problem-solving paradigms, logic and theorem proving, language and image understanding, search and control methods and learning.
Prerequisite CS 253 “Data and File Structures”, or permission of instructor.
Instructor Neli P. Zlatareva, Ph.D., Professor of Computer Science.
Office MS 30304
Phone (860) 832-2723.
E-mail zlatareva@ccsu.edu
Course Web side http://www.cs.ccsu.edu/~neli/
Office hours TR 2:30 p.m. - 3:30 p.m. and 4:45 p.m. – 5:15 p.m.
MW 12:50 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.
Textbooks:

Stuard Russell and Peter Norvig, Artificial Intelligence. A Modern Approach,
Prentice Hall, Inc. 2003 (required).

Winston and Horn LISP, 3rd edition, AddisonWesley, 1993 (recommended).

Norvig Peter. Artificial Intelligence Programming, Morgan Kaufman, 1992 -- more advanced LISP programming handbook, recommended for those interested in polishing their coding skills.
Course objectives To provide computer science students with basic knowledge on theory and practice of Artificial Intelligence as a discipline about intelligent agents capable of deciding what to do, and do it. To provide an introduction to Artificial
Intelligence programming by exploring Common Lisp.
Topics in the course (number of lecture hours each):
1. Introduction to LISP: basic LISP primitives, procedure
definition and binding, predicates and conditionals, procedure
and data abstraction, mapping. 7.0 hours
2. Intelligent agents: a discussion on what Artificial Intelligence
is about and different types of AI agents. 1.0 hours
3. Searching as a problem-solving technique: a review of
"conventional" searching methods including breadth-first,
depth-first, bi-directional and best-first search. Heuristic

functions and their effect on performance of search algorithms.
Introduction to genetic algorithms. 4.0 hours
4. Knowledge-based agents and logical problem solving:
introduction to knowledge representation and propositional logic. 6.0 hours
5. First-order logic as a basis for building intelligent
agents capable of acting and reacting in a complex environment. 6.5 hours
6. Knowledge engineering: building knowledge bases and
automated theorem provers. Production systems as an example
of logical problem solving. 5.5 hours
7.
Uncertainty and incompleteness representation and management:
introduction to truth-maintenance systems and default reasoning. 6.0 hours
8. Planning agents: representation of states, goals and
actions. The block-world example. 3.0 hours
9. Learning agents: learning from observations and
examples. Decision trees and the ID3 algorithm. 3.0 hours
10. Student presentations and class discussions. 3.0 hours
Total: 45.0 hours
Homework Assignments There will be 4 homework assignments which will require
Common Lisp environment. Free Common Lisp version can be downloaded from http://www.franz.com
Research project You will explore a research topic in a your area of interest, write a paper to summarize this research, and make a 10 to 15 minutes class presentation.
Depending on the topic, the project can be application or tool-oriented involving LISP programming (in which case a 4-5 pages paper describing the problem and the implementation must be submitted, as well as the code), or theory-oriented in which case a 15-20 pages paper is expected.
Tests There will be two tests during the semester, and a final exam.
Academic honesty All homework and other written assignments must be an individual effort of the student submitting the work for grading. See the section "Policy on
Academic Honesty" in the CCSU Student Handbook.

Grading
Homework assignments 5 points each
Research paper and presentation 10 points
Tests 20 points each
Final exam 30 points
Final grade for the course is defined as follows:
Total points Final grade
------------ -----------
94 - 100 A
90 - 93.99 A-
87 - 89.99 B+
84 - 86.99 B
80 - 83.99 B-
77 - 79.99 C+
74 - 76.99 C
70 - 73.99 C-
67 - 69.99 D+
64 - 66.99 D
60 - 63.99 D-
below 60 F