The Department of Computer Science & Engineering
cse@buffalo

CSE663: Advanced Knowledge Representation
Stuart C. Shapiro
Fall, 2007

TTh 12:30 - 1:50, 214 Norton Hall
Registration No. 454699

Professor:
Prof. Stuart C. Shapiro, 326 Bell Hall, 645-3180 ext. 125, shapiro@cse.buffalo.edu
Office Hours: MTTh 2:00-3:00, 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 2.7 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 17, 2007.

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 Tue8/28First Class
SNePS Tour: SNePSLOG
Lecture notes slides on SNePS and An Introduction to SNePS at /projects/shapiro/Sneps/SnepsIntro/intro.pdf
 Thur8/30 slides on SNePS p. 362-373
SNePSLOG Jobs demo
HW1 assigned
 Fri8/31 Last day to drop without financial penalty
2 Tue9/4 Path-based inference: slides on SNePS p. 374-381, An Introduction to SNePS Sect. 11.2, pbinfFig1, pbinfFig2, & pbinfFig3, pbinfFig4b.
 Thur9/6 SNePS Tour: Belief Revision
See Slides on BR, p 399-419
/projects/shapiro/Sneps/SnepsIntro/contradictions1.snepslog
and /projects/shapiro/Sneps/SnepsIntro/contradictions2.snepslog
 Fri9/7 Drop/Add deadline
3 Tue9/11
 Slides on BR, p 420-450
 Thur9/13 No Class: Rosh Hashanah
4 Tue9/18 Term paper proposal due
Acting: slides on SNeRE p. 383-398;
NRAC-05 Wumpus World papers: Shapiro & Kandefer
 Thur9/20 HW1 due
SNeRE examples: /projects/robot/Karel/ElevatorWorld/elevator.snepslog; /projects/robot/Fevahr/Ascii/afevahr.snepslog-along-with-/projects/robot/Fevahr/demo.sneps /projects/robot/TelephoneFevahr/FevahrTelephone.snepslog-along-with-/projects/robot/TelephoneFevahr/demo.sneps /projects/robot/Karel/WumpusWorld/WWAgent.snepslog
5 Tue9/25 SNePS Tour, contexts: An Introduction to SNePS, Chapter 8
 Thur9/27 Term paper proposal second draft due (See Dr. Rapaport's How to Write)
A Logic of Arbitrary and Indefinite Objects: talk; paper
6 Tue10/2  
 Thur10/4 Production Systems: B&L, Chap. 7; Jess
HW2 assigned: Build a Jess tic-tac-toe player; see B&L Exercise 7.11, p. 133
7 Tue10/9  
 Thur10/11 Frames: B&L, Chap. 8; Protégé 2000
8 Tue10/16 Term paper first draft due
 Thur10/18 Description Logics: B&L, Chap. 9; Protege OWL Tutorial; Classic
9 Tue10/23  
 Thur10/25 Inheritance Networks: B&L, Chap. 10
10 Tue10/30 HW2 due
HW3: Do all exercises of Section 10.5. Note that #2 should be credulous extensions wrt George, Polly, or Dick. Organization: George, questions 1-5; Polly: questions 1-5; Dick: questions 1-5. Maximum points: 3 x 5 x 1 = 15.
 Thur11/1 Defaults: B&L, Chap. 11
11 Tue11/6 Abduction: Explanation and Diagnosis, B&L, Chap. 13
 Thur11/8 Vagueness, Uncertainty, and Degrees of Belief: B&L, Chap. 12
 Fri11/9 R deadline
12 Tue11/13 HW3 due by hard-copy.
Bayesian Networks
 Thur11/15  Vague Predicates
13 Tue11/20
 Typology of DL languages
KR for Natural Language Competence
 Thur11/22 Fall Recess
14 Tue11/27  
 Thur11/29 Term paper second draft due
15 Tue12/4 Student Presentations: Torbenson, Mindolin, Nagarajan, Wiejaczka
 Thur12/6
 Last Class
Student Presentations: Seyed, Chodkowski, White
  Tue12/11
Final Exam week
 Thur12/13 Final Exam week
  Mon12/17Term paper due.
Last modified: Mon Dec 3 08:52:36 EST 2007
Stuart C. Shapiro <shapiro@cse.buffalo.edu>