The Department of Computer Science & Engineering
cse@buffalo

CSE663: Advanced Knowledge Representation
Stuart C. Shapiro
Fall, 2005

MWF 9:00 - 9:50, 250 Park Hall
Registration No. 280246


Professor:
Prof. Stuart C. Shapiro, 326 Bell Hall, 645-3180 ext. 125, shapiro@cse.buffalo.edu
Office Hours: MW 10-11, Th 1:30 - 2:30, or make an appointment via email. See my schedule for my available times.

Text:
Ronald J. Brachman & Hector J. Levesque, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Morgan Kaufmann, 2004.

Manual:
Stuart C. Shapiro and The SNePS Implementation Group, SNePS 2.6.1 User's Manual, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, Buffalo, NY, 2004.

Academic Policies:
This course will abide by the Departmental Academic Integrity policies and procedures,
and the Departmental Incomplete policy. The short versions are:

This course will also abide by the University's principles and procedures regarding students with disabilities. See the Office of Disability Services' statement on UB's Commitment to Disability Access. Notify the professor if you need any accommodations under these policies.

Course requirements:

Homeworks:
The purposes of homework exercises are: to give you hands-on experience with relatively small problems; to give you a chance to assess the level of your understanding; to support and spark in-class discussions. Small programming exercises may be assigned as homework exercises. Homeworks will be assigned in class and via this web page. The due date will be announced when the homework is assigned, and will be contained on the homework assignment. They will be due at the beginning of class on that date.
     NO LATE HOMEWORKS WILL BE ACCEPTED.
Grading: Each homework exercise will be worth some modest number of points, which will be stated when the exercise is assigned. The final homework grade will be the percentage of total points possible that were actually earned.

Term Project:
The term project is to be an implementation and a paper describing it. The implementation could either be using SNePS to implement an agent or some other knowledge-based system, or using a conventional programming language to contribute to the implementation of SNePS. See the project suggestions for some ideas. The paper must satisfy the style of a publishable paper, must describe the implementation, and must discuss the relevant literature. The use of LaTeX to prepare the paper is highly recommended. The paper/project must reflect the course material from this course. Expect to spend at least 3/4 of the semester working on the paper/project. The paper is due on the last day of Exam week: Monday, December 19, 2005.

Grading:
The weights of the various course requirements in the final course grade will be:
Attendance/Participation5%
Homeworks15%
Term project/paper80%

Course Calendar:
This is a tentative schedule, and will probably change continually as the semester proceeds.
WeekDayDateComments
1 Mon8/29First Class
SNePS Tour: SNePSLOG
SNePS and /projects/shapiro/Sneps/SnepsIntro/intro.dvi
 Wed8/31  
 Fri9/2 Last day to drop without financial penalty
SNePSLOG Jobs demo
HW1 assigned
2 Mon9/5 No Class: Labor Day
 Wed9/7 SNePS Tour: Belief Revision
See Slides on BR,
/projects/shapiro/Sneps/SnepsIntro/contradictions1.snepslog
and /projects/shapiro/Sneps/SnepsIntro/contradictions2.snepslog
 Fri9/9 Drop/Add deadline
3 Mon9/12
 
 Wed9/14 SNePS Tour: Acting
B&L Chap. 14; Slides on the Situation Calculus; NRAC-05 Wumpus World papers: Shapiro & Kandefer, Sardina & Vassos, Thielscher
 Fri9/16
 
4 Mon9/19 Term paper proposal due
More details on previous topics as needed
 Wed9/21 Contexts. Class to be held in 224 Bell Hall in conjunction with CSE720
 Fri9/23 HW1 due
HW2 assigned
5 Mon9/26 A Logic of Arbitrary and Indefinite Objects: talk; paper
 Wed9/28 KR View of Prolog: B&L, Chaps. 5, 6; slides
 Fri9/30  
6 Mon10/3  
 Wed10/5 Demonstration of agents in The Trial The Trail. Meet in 266 CFA
 Fri10/7 Production Systems: B&L, Chap. 7; Jess
7 Mon10/10 HW2 due
 Wed10/12 Frames: B&L, Chap. 8; Protégé 2000; JessTab: Integrating Protégé and Jess; JessTab Manual
 Fri10/14
 
8 Mon10/17 Term paper first draft due
 Wed10/19  
 Fri10/21 R deadline
HW3 assigned
Description Logics: B&L, Chap. 9; Classic
9 Mon10/24  
 Wed10/26  
 Fri10/28  
10 Mon10/31  
 Wed11/2 HW3 due
Inheritance Networks: B&L, Chap. 10
 Fri11/4  
11 Mon11/7 HW4 assigned
 Wed11/9 Defaults: B&L, Chap. 11
 Fri11/11  
12 Mon11/14 HW4 due
A solution is posted
 Wed11/16 Discuss Courteous Logic Programs and Default reasoning by preferential ordering.
(See: Grosof's paper; Shapiro's talk in ps or Shapiro's talk in dvi;
and Bharat Bhushan, Preferential Ordering of Beliefs for Default Reasoning.)
Try the demo in /projects/shapiro/CSE663/defaultByPreferenceDemo.snepslog
 Fri11/18  
13 Mon11/21
Term paper second draft due
HW5: Do all exercises of Section 10.5. Note that #2 should be credulous extensions wrt George, Polly, or Dick. Maximum points: 3 x 5 x 1 = 15.
 Wed11/23 Fall Recess
 Fri11/25 Fall Recess
14 Mon11/28  
 Wed11/30 SNePS 3
 Fri12/2  
15 Mon12/5 HW5 due by hard-copy. A solution will be posted.
 Wed12/7
 
 Fri12/9 Last Class
  Mon12/12
Final Exam week
 Wed12/14 Final Exam week
 Fri12/16
Final Exam week
  Mon12/19Term paper due.

Last modified: Mon Dec 5 08:44:07 EST 2005
Stuart C. Shapiro <shapiro@cse.buffalo.edu>