CS 188, Fall 2005
Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

Announcements

• John DeNero, denero AT eecs.berkeley.edu, 492 Soda Hall, 643-4204
  Office Hours Mon 4-5 in 551 Soda, Th 11-12 in 711 Soda. Section page.
• Blaine Nelson, nelsonb AT eecs.berkeley.edu, 443 Soda Hall, 642-8248
  Office Hours Wed 3-4 and 5-6, Fri 11-12 in 751 Soda.
• Qian Ying Tang, qiantang@eecs, 290 Cory, 643-7676
  Office Hours Wed 4-6 in 711 Soda.

Here are the policies that govern admission into classes, and here are some answers to frequently asked questions about admission.

• Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, SECOND EDITION, Prentice Hall, 2003 (Required)
  The first edition (red cover) is not usable for the course as it is now taught.
• Paul Graham, ANSI Common Lisp, Prentice Hall, 1996 (Recommended)
• Notes on Lisp; especially useful if you know Scheme but not Lisp.
• Tutorial on how to use Lisp, emacs, and the AIMA code.
• Lisp FAQ has lots of useful information on Lisp.
• Another useful bookmark is the online version of Common Lisp, the Language, 2nd Edition, by Guy Steele -- this has the full text of the complete reference manual for Common Lisp. The differences from ANSI Common Lisp are minor.

Programming assignments should be turned in using the submit program from an instructional (named or class) account, as described here.

Written assignments may be placed in the homework box in 283 Soda, or they may be turned in online using submit.

The written assignments are to be done individually, the project assignments in pairs (except for Assignment 0).

Discussion of assignments among students is permitted and encouraged, but solutions and programs may not be copied. I would recommend NOT mixing discussion with writing up of solutions or code. See the EECS Department Policy on Academic Dishonesty and Kris Pister's policy for further explanation and examples.

It is a good idea to start your programming assignments as soon as you can; computers have a tendency to go down the night before an assignment is due. There is evidence from past courses that students who start working well before the due date take about one third the time to complete their work compared to students who wait until the last minute. In general, it will be worth your while to spend more time away from the workstation thinking about programs than struggling with them on-line.

• Assignment 0, due 9/8, 1% of grade. Solution 0
• Assignment 1, due 9/20, 5% of grade. Solution 1
• Assignment 2, due 10/9, 8% of grade. Solution 2
• Assignment 3, due 10/16, 5% of grade plus 1% bonus. Solution 3
• Assignment 4, due 11/4, 5% of grade. Solution 4
• Assignment 5 part 1, due 11/14, 3.2% of grade
• Assignment 5 part 2, due 11/28, 4.8% of grade (+ up to 2% extra credit).
• Assignment 6 part 1, due 12/5, 4% of grade
• Assignment 6 part 2, due 12/16, up to 5% extra credit.

• Fall 91, Fall 91 solutions
• Fall 92, Fall 92 solutions
• Spring 93 (first), Spring 93 (first) solutions
• Spring 93 (second), Spring 93 (second) solutions
• Fall 93 (first), Fall 93 (first) solutions
• Fall 93 (second), Fall 93 (second) solutions
• Fall 95
• Spring 96, Spring 96 solutions
• Fall 97, Fall 97 solutions
• Fall 99, Fall 99 solutions
• Spring 02, Spring 02 solutions
• Fall 02, Fall 02 solutions
• Spring 04, Spring 04 solutions
• Spring 05, Spring 05 solutions
• Fall 05, Fall 05 solutions

Old finals (postscript) (some incomplete; some missing, not available)

• Fall 91, Fall 91 solutions
• Fall 92
• Spring 93, Spring 93 solutions
• Fall 93
• Spring 96
• Fall 97, Fall 97 solutions
• Fall 99, Fall 99 solutions
• Spring 02, Spring 02 solutions
• Fall 02, Fall 02 solutions
• Spring 04, Spring 04 solutions
• Spring 05, Spring 05 solutions
• Fall 05, Fall 05 solutions

Please use your account responsibly and be considerate of your fellow students. You will end up spending less time (and have a more pleasant experience) if you do not wait until the night before the assignment due date to fight for computer cycles.

We will use LISP. The amount of programming required is not large, and we don't expect you to be an expert in LISP, but we do expect that you've worked with Scheme in CS61A, and that you can more or less pick up the differences between the two (which will be reviewed by the TAs in the beginning of the semester, and will also be the subject of Assignment 0). You will have to work with some code we have written, so please get up to speed on LISP quickly.

The particular implementation of LISP we will use is called Allegro Common LISP (ACL or alisp), from Franz, Inc. There is copious, if awkwardly organized, documentation available.

ACL is available on the Solaris servers (e.g., star.cs, nova.cs, solar.cs) but apparently not on the Solaris X86 PCs in 277 Soda. You can use other machines too, and the source code should work in most versions of Common LISP, but remember that compiled code runs only on the architecture for which it was compiled. You run ACL by executing the command

/usr/sww/lang/acl/alisp

If you like, you can do the assignments on your own machine. Franz Inc. offers free trial downloads of Allegro CL 7.0 for Windows and Linux. The trial edition is indefinitely renewable and includes a compiler.

• The version available to the general public is mainly geared to the first edition of the book, but has a lot of useful documentation. This code is NOT compatible with the code we will be using in class.
• The version for use in this class, which matches the second edition and, when complete, will become the official public version. There will be several ways to access the code:
  • You can browse the source code here.
  • On an instructional machine, you can access the code directly on the instructional machines at ~cs188/code-2e-188. You can load ~cs188/code-2e-188/aima.lisp into Lisp and use the class code as is, or you can copy the whole directory to your own account.
  • If you want to use the code on other machines (e.g., home PCs under Windows or Linux), you will probably want the source-only ZIP file.
  In all cases where you are using your own copy of the code, remember to change *aima-root* in aima.lisp, using the right directory name separator (e.g., \\ for Windows machines).

I recommend working through the Notes on Lisp and the tutorial on how to use lisp, emacs, and the AIMA code; it takes only a few minutes.

When you first subscribe, the browser may ask you for the "NNTP server"; the UCB server is agate.berkeley.edu, which is accessible from any UCB machine. You can also log into http://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/webnews/ with an instructional ID and password.  If you try to read the newsgroup from some other server than agate (e.g., your ISP's NNTP server), you'll find that your posts don't make it to Berkeley's server. Send messages to ucb-class-cs188@agate.berkeley.edu to get them posted.

The class newsgroup is suitable for asking general questions about what the homework questions mean, how the course software works, etc. Do not ask or answer specific questions about homework solutions, e.g., "What's the right answer for number 2?" One of the course TAs will be checking the newsgroup fairly regularly, but for "official" answers to important questions you might want to email your own TA directly, AFTER you have checked to see if the question has already been answered on the newsgroup!