Course Description

• Summary of Content: There are cognitive tasks that people can do relatively easy, but that can be difficult to program on a computer. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the science of developing computer systems that can carry out these tasks.
• Educational Objectives: enable students to learn some of the fundamental topics that underly several areas of modern AI and to get programming skills of developing AI applications.
• Required Text Book: 
  Thinking as Computation: A First Course, written by Hector Levesque. Published by the MIT Press, February 2012, 328 pp. ISBN-10: 0-262-01699-0, ISBN-13: 978-0-262-01699-5.
• Recommended Text Books: 
  Computational Intelligence: A Logical Approach by David Poole, Alan Mackworth and Randy Goebel, ISBN-13: 9780195102703, Publisher: Oxford University Press, 576 pages, 1998.

  Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig   Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 3rd edition, Copyright 2010, Publisher: Prentice Hall, ISBN-13: 9780136042594, 1152 pages.

• Another recommended reference: George F. Luger   Artificial Intelligence: Structures and Strategies for Complex Problem Solving, 6th edition, 784 pages. Publisher: Addison-Wesley, Copyright 2009.
• Topics (tentative list): This course will provide undergraduate-level introduction to several important AI problems and techniques, including deductive reasoning, understanding natural language, finding solutions that satisfy a given set of constraints (e.g., interpreting visual scenes), problem solving and planning, pruning of search space, Bayesian networks, other topics (if time permits). A moderate amount of Prolog programming will be required as part of the course.

Course Policies

• Examinations: The quizzes, a midterm exam, and the final exam may include problem solving, short essay questions as well as writing Prolog code. The duration of these examinations will be 15-45 min, 1h40min, and 2h30min, respectively. The final exam will be cumulative and will include all the material covered throughout the term. There will be no supplemental examination. Grades are earned for the demonstration of knowledge. If you miss an exam for medical reasons, you have to provide an official medical certificate to the department of Computer Science within 3 working days.
  Brief quizzes may be given at any time in class without preliminary notice (marks will contribute to the class participation). A mark for a quiz will be given to a student only if (1) s/he attends the entire class for which the participation occurs, and (2) the instructor observed the student actively participating, and (3) the student signs the quiz (including a student number); (4) quizzes must be submitted when students are asked to do so; late quizzes will not be accepted. The participation mark will be given primarily for effort, and less for solution correctness. There will be no make-up quizzes. If you missed a quiz, it is recommended to ask other students for a copy and solve the quiz independently.


• Dates are subject to change, all changes will be announced in class and on the course Web pages.
• Assignments should be submitted on or before the deadline specified in the assignment (you are encouraged to submit assignments earlier). Your assignment is considered late if any part of the assignment is late and the penalty for a late assignment is 10% off. No assignments will be accepted if more than 24 hours late.
• All assignments have to be submitted electronically using a special purpose script that you can run on any moon computer (log in Linux operating system to run this script). You can submit your assignment either locally from labs, or remotely from home. You you have decided to submit it remotely, it is your responsibility to make sure that you have ssh software installed at your home computer. You need this software to login remotely into any of the moons and run a specified script there. You are expected to know basic UNIX commands and utilities. Also, it is your responsibility to keep your Computer Science email account in good standing and know your login/password information. Contact one of system administrators if you have technical questions.
• From time to time, I will hand out exercises. The students are expected to solve the exercises, but they will not be graded. However, working on exercises will improve your understanding of this course (and will help you to get better marks on tests).
• Up to 5% extra credit may be assigned for class participation (a student attends the entire class, participates actively by asking/answering questions, solves exercises in class).
• Handouts and assignments will be made available on the Web only. More specifically, they will be linked from the cps721 online course shell on Blackboard. Also, you are responsible for visiting the course Web pages regularly and reading all information that is provided or linked from these Web pages. In particular, FAQs related to cps721 home work will be linked from this Web page. Before sending your questions by e-mail to the instructor, check these Web pages whether similar questions have been already answered.
• Email communication: please send me email from local Ryerson's email addresses only. Please be aware that email sent from Yahoo, Hotmail and other popular domains can be filtered out as spam and might not reach me. Email messages will be normally answered within 24 hours; however, messages sent on weekend (starting from Friday evening) will be usually answered on Monday.
• Grades for tests and assignments will be posted on Ryerson Blackboard no later than two weeks after the due date (test date). Solutions to the assignments and some other course related documents will be posted on the Ryerson Blackboard only. Graded assignments, tests and labs will be usually returned to students within two weeks. Those students who missed a class when their graded work was returned are welcome to pick it up from the instructor during the posted office hours.

ACADEMIC MISCONDUCT
Committing academic misconduct, such as plagiarism and cheating, will trigger academic penalties including failing grades, suspension and possibly expulsion from the University. As a Ryerson student, you are responsible for familiarizing yourself with the Student Code of Academic Conduct.

Remarking Policy

1. Grades are earned for the demonstration of knowledge.
2. Read carefully the marking guide for the assignment or test you'd like to be remarked.
3. Fill in this remarking form (available online).
4. Forward your assignment and the remarking request form to the TA who marked your assignment. To do this, leave your remarking request attached to the hard copy of your assignment at the Computer Science reception (ask for a stamp with the date). Send email to the TA to inform that you left a remarking request. You can also arrange a meeting with a TA in person.
5. Remarking request can be submitted within 10 working days of the return of the graded work (quiz/assignment/test) in class. It is your responsibility to pick up your quiz/assignment/test as soon as possible. Late regrading requests will not be accepted.
6. Mark can decrease if TA finds something that was incorrectly awarded too high a mark.

Tentative Course Calendar (all changes of dates will be announced)

Course Work	Due Date	Grade Value (%)
Assignment  1	September 24, Monday	5
Assignment 2	October 9, Tuesday	5
Assignment 3	October 22, Monday	5
Midterm	Friday, October 26, 4-6pm	20
Assignment 4	November 12, Monday	5
Assignment 5	November 26, Monday	5
In-class quizzes	Fall term	5
Final Exam	Exam period	50
		100