22c:295 - Seminar on Artificial Intelligence

Constraint-based Reasoning

Spring 2001

Course Syllabus

Instructor

Prof. Cesare Tinelli
201E MLH
335-0735
tinelli@cs.uiowa.edu

Office hours: Mon 3:30-5pm, Wed 2-3:30pm, or by appointment.

Lectures

TuTh 2:30-3:45pm, 205 McLean Hall.

Prerequisites

22C:145 and/or 22C:245 or consent of instructor. Familiarity with first-order logic and automated reasoning is required.

Web Page

Most of the information about the class, including handouts and reading assignments, will be available from the class web site: www.cs.uiowa.edu/~tinelli/295/

Course Description

Constraint-based Reasoning is an automated reasoning paradigm that combines the versatility of general-purpose reasoning with the performance of specialized constraint solving. For being specialized on a particular domain, constraint solvers can reason much more efficiently on their domain than general-purpose reasoners. Because of their specialization, however, they do not provide general-purpose reasoning capabilities. The main objective of Constraint-based Reasoning is then to combine the advantages of both general-purpose and specialized reasoning by augmenting general-purpose reasoners with one or more fast constraint solvers, each specialized on a certain domain of interest.
In this course we will survey of a number of constraint-based reasoning frameworks from the literature, and experiment with some constraint-based reasoning systems.

Course Objectives

The main objective of this course is to expose you to the main principles and techniques of constraint-based reasoning. At the same time the course is designed to contribute to your professional growth as a researcher by

developing your ability to read research papers critically, by recognizing main points and contributions, and identifying strengths and weaknesses;
refining your communication skills; in particular, your ability to present research work to an audience, and to discuss technical material with your peers;
stimulating your potential for original research.

These goals will be achieved mainly by means of weekly readings, in-class discussions and presentations, and course projects.

Assignments and Exams

You will be given weekly reading assignments and will be expected to be able to discuss the readings in class. Normally, the assignments will also require you to write brief summaries and evaluations of the reading material.
Each week one of you will give a presentation to the class on one of the papers in the readings. The presentation will be subject to a written review by the other students.
There will be no exams in this course.

Projects

There will be a one or two mini-projects and a course project. The mini-projects will be programming assignments.
The course project will be either programming-oriented, consisting in creating/improving a constraint-based reasoning system, or theory-oriented, consisting in creating/improving a constraint-based reasoning framework.
Each project will be concluded by a in-class presentation and a written report. Both the presentation and the report will be subject to peer review.

Textbook and Readings

There is no textbook for this class. The list of the reading material, both background references and assigned readings, will be published on the course webpage. Most of the assigned readings and some of the background references will be available on-line.

Grading

The weighting of items in grade determination will be the following: presentations and participation to class discussion 30%, mini-projects 10%, term project 60%.

Special Needs

The instructor must hear from anyone who has a disability that may require some modification of seating, testing, or other class requirements so that appropriate arrangements can be made. Please see the instructor after class or during office hours.