CSC 290: Artificial Intelligence

Instructor:  Joseph O'Rourke
Required Textbook: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Stuart Russell, Peter Norvig. ISBN: 0131038052. ($73 at amazon.com; $?? at our bookstore.) This book is 932 pages, much much more than we can cover in the semester. And it is more advanced than we need; it is used in many graduate courses. But it is by far the best book available (I examined about ten), and I think it is better to get an expensive good book than to get a weak but less expensive one. The book has a useful Web page.
Recommended Textbook: ANSI Common Lisp. Paul Graham. Prentice Hall. 1996. ISBN: 0133708756. ($47 at amazon.com; $?? at our bookstore.) You do not have to purchase this. I will have two copies available, one in McC104 and one in McC209. And I will teach LISP under the assumption that you have no book. But among those available, this is one of the best. There are also online resources.
Time: MWF 10-10:50.
Location: Burton 209
Prerequisites: Computer Science II (CSC 112). NB: This is a change from the past two offerings, when the course had no prerequisites. Although I will not explicitly use C or C++ in class, I will assume you are proficient programmers in those languages while teaching LISP.
Programming Language: LISP (no prior exposure assumed).
Course Structure:  We meet three times a week; there is no lab.  There will be one assignment per week, due each Monday morning at 10:00AM.  There will be one reading quiz per week, taken self-scheduled on the Web by Monday at 10:00AM. There will be a project starting Thanksgiving and due the last day of classes. No midterm or final exam.

Grading:

O'Rourke Office Hours & Schedule

Syllabus