Course

1
Welcome

• Course
• Foundations of Constraint Processing, CSCE
  421/821
• Instructor
• Berthe Y. Choueiry (Shu-we-ri),
  choueiry_at_cse.unl.edu,
• Office AVH 123B, Tel [phone]
• Apologizes for absence during Oct 4--6, attending
  a conference
• No GTA ?
• List of names
• Please check your name, email address, and
  program of study

2
Pre-requisites

• Pre-requisites
• CSCE 310 and CSCE 476/876
• If you do not have pre-reqs, contact instructor
• Track
• CS students theory track
• PhD qualifier sub-part of the AI exam
• 3 credit-hours

3
Meetings

• Regular class
• Tuesday, Thursday 11001215
• Recitation
• Wednesday 500600 p.m.
• More often than not, will be used for make-up
  classes
• Lectures will be given
• By instructor
• By visitors
• 1 researcher from Adventium (tentative)
• 1 researcher from PARC (tentative)
• Occasionally, presentations by students and
  research assistants

4
Help

• Office hours
• Instructor Tuesday, Thursday 1230 p.m.130
  p.m.
• QA Send your questions
• Email to cse421_at_cse.unl.edu (will be set up soon)
• Ask your questions during Wednesday make-up class
• Share your ideas and good pointers with class
• Send email to cse421-ml_at_cse.unl.edu (will be set
  up soon)
• Message will be broadcast to the entire class
  (use sparinglyl!)
• Good pointers will be listed on the web under
  Your catch

5
Expectations I

• Mastery of pre-requisite's material
• Effort outside classroom
• 9 hours of work outside classroom, if you have
  pre-requisites
• If you spend more time, contact instructor
• Attendance
• Sign-up sheet circulated for attendance
• Attendance of lectures and recitation is
  mandatory
• Absence maximum 4 sessions (including
  recitation)
• Prior notification (email) for absence is
  mandatory

6
Expectations 2

• Collaboration policy
• Feel free to discuss it with others
• But do it on your own
• Always acknowledge sources help received
• Prompt response to notifications
• Sent to your email address at CSE (you must have
  one)
• Posted on web cse.unl.edu/choueiry/F05-421-821/
• If you drop the class, let me know ASAP

7
Grading

• Pretest 3
• Quizzes 37, cannot not be made up
• Assignments 25
• Programming and penpaper
• Turned-in on due date, before lecture
• Delay penality 20 per day, starting first
  minute after deadline
• You may use any programming language acceptable
  to GTA
• Project 35
• Individual (preferred) or in small teams (if
  really necessary)
• (? mid-term) ? ( ? final)
• Feedback
• Glossaries and HWK will be rotated for grading,
  supervised by instructor
• Grades are posted at door of AVH 123
• Grades will NOT be sent by email
• Need more feedback? Please, let us know how

8
Projects

• A list of possible projects is forthcoming, will
  include
• Search competition for solving the GTA assignment
  problem
• 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.
• Alternatives
• Propose your own project or discuss with
  instructor
• Help a research assistant in her work (Yaling
  Zheng)
• At the end of project, you must submit with
  handin
• Project report ltlastnamegt-report.ext
• Slides ltlastnamegt-defense.ext
• Code ltlastnamegt-code.tar

9
Improving your grades

• Do the glossaries weekly final (8 total)
• Must be typewritten, and alphabetically sorted
• Goal entice you to do required reading
• Collect bonus points
• 100 attendance,
• Find bugs in slides, in lectures,
• Be vocal in class, solve riddles, etc.
• Present a research paper (10 per presentation)
• Write a critical summary of a research paper (5
  per summary)
• Write a chapter of a textbook (20 total)
• Restrictions apply (deadlines, max number per
  student)

10
Important dates

• Regularly check schedule on the web (3
  times/week)
• Thu, Oct 6 Project must be chosen, use handin
• Thu, Nov 3 progress report on projects due, use
  handin
• Thu, Nov 17
• First deadline for extra-credit work 1
  presentation, 2 summaries, 1 chapter write-up
  must be done by this date
• Wed, Dec 1
• Second deadline for extra-credit work All paper
  presentations (Max 2), summaries (Max 4), chapter
  write-up (Max 2) must be done by this date.
• Tue, Nov 29 Thu, Dec 1 quiz may be given in
  class
• Thu, Dec 1 Deadline for final glossary
• Tue/Wed/Thu Dec. 6, 7, 8 (dead week) project
  presentations, some presentations could be
  schedule in evenings if necessary
• Thu, Dec 8 projects code slides (when
  applicable) due, use handin

11
Course material

• 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
• New textbook by Dechter (available at bookstore).
  Will not be followed linearly, but should be
  used for reference.
• Book by Tsang (on reserve at LL, available
  on-line, out of print)
• Papers from WWW, course web-page, library,
  electronic reserves, instructor,
  http//citeseer.ist.psu.edu/, etc.

12
More resources

• Web
• Check links www.cse.unl.edu/choueiry/F05-421-821
  /
• Benchmark problems www.csplib.org
• eLists csp_at_carlit.toulouse.inra.fr,
  comp.constraints
• CP Online http//slash.math.unipd.it/cp
• Conferences
• CP, AIOR, IJCAI, ECAI, NCAI (AAAI), FLAIRS...
• Workshops in parallel to conferences
• Journals
• Constraints, AIJ, JACM, Annals of AIMath, etc.

13
Your future Jobs!!

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