B552: Knowledge-Based Computation
Spring 2008
Homework 1: Gathering and Representing Everyday Knowledge

This assignment will give you first-hand experience in the knowledge capture issues that must be addressed to encode commonsense knowledge, as well as an opportunity to analyze and critique a knowledge representation scheme and get detailed comments from other students. The assignment will be done by teams of students, in the groups listed below. It will be done in three steps: Group generation of a knowledge representation, critiques of others' representations, and presentations/discussions. Note that none of these parts may be submitted late.
  1. Due Monday, Jan 28, before class: Each group will prepare a written report, addressing exercise 8.15 in Russell and Norvig (first edition) or 10.22 (second edition). A pdf file of the report should be submitted on Oncourse, with hard copies brought to class for each person in the group assigned to critique the report. These reports should be 5-10 pages long, and may include figures for hierarchies, etc. The writeup should include information on your design decisions, the major issues that arose during your work, and any disagreements in the group. Please be sure to include your group number at the top.

  2. Due Wednesday, Jan 30, before class: Each group will prepare a short critique/commentary on another group's representation. This critique should contain your analysis of the strengths of the approach, as well as constructive criticism of issues you observe and notes about important differences from your representation. The group doing the critique is free to ask members of the original group for clarifications, explanations, etc. The group should submit a pdf file of the critique on Oncourse, and bring a hard copy of the critique to class for each member of the group being critiqued. Please be sure to include both your group number and the number of the group being critiqued at the top.
  3. In class, Monday, Feb 4 Each group will together prepare a 15-20 minute presentation of the highlights of their representation, to be presented by two of the group members (each group will choose its representatives). Because the other students in the class will have worked on the same problem, the presentation should focus on key design decisions, what you found challenging and why, and what you see as the strengths and weaknesses of your representations, supported by examples.

    As part of your presentation, you should discuss how your representation could handle the questions in 10.23 from Russell and Norvig, and what would be major or minor. Notes: Please don't look at 10.23 until your representation is complete, and you do not need to change your representation to deal with these.

    The presentation will be followed by time for questions and discussion from the class, with all group members participating.

    To make sure your presentation is effective, be sure to practice your presentation in advance and have a member of the group monitor time of the in-class presentation.

    The critiquing group will then briefly present a 5-minute critique, the initial group will be allowed to respond, and the issues will be discussed.

    Groups are free to revise their representations based on the critiques. If they do so, their presentations should credit the critiquing group's suggestions and point out the "before and after" changes. The critiquing group can then give their assessment of the changes.

    All groups should be ready to present on Feb 4, but one or two groups may be pushed to the following class, depending on the amount of discussion on the first day.

The assignment grades will be based on each group's report, presentation, and critique.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

Student Groups

  1. Brent, Eran, Nilesh
  2. Chris, Scott, Thilina
  3. Seehyun, Sribabu, Joey, Huijun
  4. Jaliya, Xin, Paul, Mark
Each group will critique the report of the following group (with group 4 critiquing group 1).

References

In addition to Russell and Norvig's knowledge representation chapter (chapter 8 in the first edition; 10 in the second), the following book on reserve at Swain may be helpful:

Optional But Encouraged: Try It Out!

Using prolog (accessed with the "pl" command on CS suns, e.g., school) or a similar system (e.g., a logic programming framework in scheme), it's easy to encode rules and check their consequences, which will give a better feeling for how your knowledge works and whether it has gaps.

If you'd like to explore this, feel free to work together with others in the class with relevant expertise to help (whether or not in your group) or to consult with outside students. Also, there are many prolog tutorials on the Web, e.g., Prolog in Examples.

If you do this, feel free to include some output in your writeup and class presentation.