Practicum in Artificial Intelligence

CS4701  - Fall 2009 - Hod Lipson
Department of Computer Science, Cornell University

Time and Place

Phillips Hall, 219

Project topics and teaming

Projects can cover almost any topic as long they have a significant AI component that will be developed anew for this course. Projects usually involve either (a) applying a known AI technique (from class) to a new problem, including formalizing the problem and identifying appropriate representations, or (b) improving an existing AI technique and testing it on a series of test problems.  It is ok to use existing code from other projects, open-source code and libraries, however this must be explicitly described in the proposal and approved by the TA in advance, in which case you will be graded on your added value beyond this existing code.

Students are encouraged to team in groups of 3-4 students.  Once you have identified your team and topic please registered them on the CS4700 Wiki and select a proposal presentation date. A TA will be assigned to your team, and you should stay in touch with that TA throughout the semester.

Course Staff and office hours

Instructor: Hod Lipson
Head TA: Ruben Sipos
Name email Office hours & location
Hod Lipson Hod.lipson@cornell.edu  Friday, 1-2pm, Upson 216
Fang Liu fl95@cornell.edu     Friday, 2-3pm, Upson 328
Ruben Sipos rs727@cornell.edu  Wednesdays 4:30-5:30, Upson 328
Jesse Simons jms263@cornell.edu  Mon 2:30-3:30pm, Upson 328
Chris Parsons csp33@cornell.edu     Tuesday 3-4pm, Upson 328
Jonathan Hui jyh27@cornell.edu     Thursday 3-4pm, Upson 328
Daniel Perelman dap56@cornell.edu     Thursday 4-5pm, Upson 328
Blair Davis bad29@cornell.edu     Tuesday 1:30-2:30pm, Upson 328
Liheng Frank Chen flc23@cornell.edu     Wednesdays 3:30-4:30pm, Upson 328
Tze Jian Chear tc262@cornell.edu     Monday 3:30-4:30pm, Upson 328

Mailing List

For questions email cs4700ta-l "at" lists.cs.cornell.edu. (Note: Remove the extra spaces).  The list is set to mail all the TA's and Prof. Lipson -- you will get the best response time by using this facility, and all the TA's will know the question you asked and the answers you receive.

Prerequisites

You may take CS4701 as a supplement to CS4700. CS4700 is a co-requisite for CS4701.

Syllabus

The goal of this practicum is to allow students the opportunity to apply concepts and techniques learned in CS 4700 - Foundations of Artificial Intelligence. The main assignment for CS4701 is a course project. Students will work in groups (probably pairs, three if well justified by scope). A project proposal is required, an oral presentation, weekly progress meetings with the TA and a final presentation, including demo, on the last week of classes.   A separate project handout with project suggestions, details, and due dates regarding the project proposal, and final project write-up will be made available from the course home page.

Grading

This is a 2-credit course. Grades will be determined based on proposal quality and final report, as well as participation in weekly meetings.

Academic Integrity

This course follows the Cornell University Code of Academic Integrity. Each student in this course is expected to abide by the Cornell University Code of Academic Integrity. Any work submitted by a team in this course for academic credit is expected to be the team's own work. Collaboration is between teams is allowed at a conceptual design level, but you cannot copy all or part of another student's code. Uses of existing open-source code is allowed only with TAs approval, in which case the team's performance will be judged on their added value beyond the functionality of the basic code. Violations of the rules (e.g. cheating, copying, non-approved collaborations or code use) will not be tolerated.