Foundations of Constraint Processing CSCE421/821, Fall 2003

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Foundations of Constraint ProcessingCSCE421/821,
Fall 2003

• - Welcome
• - GTA Catherine Anderson (anderson_at_cse.unl.edu)
  
• - Pre-req 310 476/876, or permission
• - Sign-up sheet check your name and email
  address
• - Check www.cse.unl.edu/choueiry/F03-421-821/

Berthe Y. Choueiry (Shu-we-ri) Ferguson Hall,
Room 104 choueiry_at_cse.unl.edu Tel
1(402)472-5444
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Admin I

• Time Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10301120 a.m.
• Office hours
• Instructor Monday/Wednesday 1130 a.m.1230
  p.m.
• GTA Monday 1230130 p.m. Friday 1120
  a.m.1230 p.m.
• GRAs TBA
• Course
• Theory track, 3 credit-hours
• Lectures by instructor, 1 industrial visitor
• Occasionally, presentations by students
• Communications web page, email
  cse421_at_cse.unl.edu
• Rules
• Absence 6 sessions max.
• Collaboration policy
• Discuss it with others
• Do it on your own, clearly acknowledge help
  received sources

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Admin II

• Grading
• Pretest 3
• Quizzes 32, cannot not be made up
• Assignments 30 (programming, penpaper)
• Search competition/Project 35
• (? mid-term) ? ( ? final)
• Improve your grades
• Present a research paper (10 per presentation)
• Critical summary of a research paper (5 per
  summary)
• Write a chapter of a textbook (20 total)
• Glossaries weekly final (5 total)
• Bonus for 100 attendance, class interaction,
  riddles,... etc.

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Admin III

• Important dates
• Regularly check class schedule on WWW
• Friday, Aug 29th pretest (20 min. max)
• Monday, Sep 29th project topic must be chosen.
• Friday, Oct 31st progress reports/pre-presentati
  on due
• Friday, Dec 5 final reports due
• Dec. 812 (dead weak) project presentations
• Wed, Dec 17 (project presentations)

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Projects

• Suggestions
• Contribute to GTA assignment program
• Implement and evaluate an algorithm
• Model and solve a (simple) practical problem
• Investigate an advanced theoretical concept
• Conduct a critical literature survey (at least 3
  papers), etc.
• A detailed list of possible projects is
  forthcoming
• Alternatives
• Propose your own project or discuss with
  instructor
• Work with a GRA (Anderson, Gompert, Guddeti,
  Lal, Zheng, Zou)

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How to Write a Critical Summary

• This generic template is provided as an aid but
  is not mandatory
• PART I your understanding of the paper
• PART II your opinion of the paper

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PART I The Paper

• What Context of the paper
• problem the authors claim to address (i.e.,
  motivation)
• assumptions they make
• solution they claim to provide
• How Short Description of proposed technique
• basic algorithmic steps
• optimizations, if any
• evaluation empirical/theoretical
• Impact Comparison to previous techniques
• if provided, how?
• can you identify/propose some other?
• What next Directions for future research

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PART II Your Opinion

• Is the paper a real advancement of the state of
  the art?
• Is it useful for the theory? for practice?
• Can you identify other uses of the proposed
  technique(s)?
• What are the shortcomings?
• Can you identify more? can you propose a fix?
• Any issues swept-under-the-carpet?
• Can you identify other directions for future
  research?

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Additional Information

• Content of the course
• Introduction definition and practical examples
• Foundations and basic mechanisms
• Advanced solving techniques
• Extensions to the problem definition
• Alternative approaches to solving the problem
• Course support
• Optional new textbook by Dechter (available at
  bookstore)
• Book by Tsang (on reserve at LL, available
  on-line, out of print)
• Papers from WWW, course web-page, library,
  electronic reserves, instructor,
  citeseer.nj.nec.com/cs, etc.

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Pointers to Resources

• Web
• Some links www.cse.unl.edu/choueiry/F03-421-821/
  
• Archives at CCC _at_UNH
• Benchmark problems www.csplib.org
• eLists csp_at_carlit.toulouse.inra.fr,
  comp.constraints
• Conferences CP (WSs), IJCAI, ECAI, NCAI (AAAI),
  FLAIRS, etc.
• Journals Constraints, AIJ, JACM, Annals of
  AIMath, etc.

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Your future Jobs!!

• Commercial companies Ilog, i2 Technologies,
  Trilogy, PeopleSoft/Red Pepper, Carmen Systems
  (Sweden), etc.
• Prestigious research centers NASA Ames, JPL, BT
  Labs (UK), IBM WatsonAlmaden, etc.
• Start your own Selectica, Seibel, Parc
  Technologies Ltd, OnTarget, In Time Systems Inc,
  Blue Pumpkin, etc.
• - Constraint languages,
• - Modeling, constraint representation,
  reasoning propagation mechanisms
• Academic - Dedicated reasoning diagnosis,
  CBR, planning
• scheduling, design,
  configuration, etc.