CSE-505: Computing With Logic

Fall 2008

Contents

Course Information

Class Place and Time:

Mon., Wed. 5:20pm -- 6:45pm
Melville Library N 4072
CS 2129

Instructor:

C. R. Ramakrishnan
Office: 1420 Computer Science Building, 632-8218
email: cram at cs dot sunysb dot edu

Office Hours: Tue., Thu. 1:00pm -- 2:00pm, or by appointment

Web Pages:

The web pages of this course will be hosted on Stony Brook's Blackboard system. Course announcements will be posted there. Blackboard also hosts a discussion board for this course. Homeworks will also be submitted using the same system. I have usually posted course notes etc. linked from these pages (outside blackboard) so that they can be accessed even by those not enrolled in the class. I will continue to do so this semester too.

Prerequisites:

Graduate standing in the Computer Science Department, and a course that covered at least the syntax and semantics of First-Order Predicate Logic (FOPL). Or permission of instructor.

Course Outline:

This course explores logic as a programming paradigm. It is appropriate for M.S. or Ph.D. students who have some background in logic and are interested in programming languages, advanced databases and knowledge bases, and knowledge representation. This course will train students on the use of logic for specifying problems and evaluating these specifications efficiently.

The course will review first-order logic; cover the basic concepts of Horn Clauses, unification, resolution; conventional logic programming as manifested in the Prolog programming language; novel logic programming techniques based on tabled resolution; applications of logic programming including language processing, knowledge representation and artificial intelligence, search and optimization, and program analysis.

Text Book:

There is no formal text book for this course. The following book (currently out of print, but may be available from online retailers) was used in previous semesters, and gives a good intro. to Prolog and applications: There are a number of other Prolog texts, some of which are available on 2-hour loan from the library:

We will also use material from the following book (available online):

Accessing Blackboard:

You can access Blackboard at : http://blackboard.stonybrook.edu

If you have used Stony Brook's Blackboard system previously, your login information (Username and Password) has not changed. If you have never used Stony Brook's Blackboard system , your initial password is your SOLAR ID# and your username is the same as your Stony Brook (sparky) username, which is generally your first initial and the first 7 letters of your last name.

For help or more information see http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/helpdesk/bb.shtml.

Grading:

Homeworks: 20%
One Mid-Term Exam: 40%
Final Exam: 40%

Important Dates:

Mid-Term Exam: Oct. 29
Final Exam: Dec. 22

Students with Special Needs:

If you have a physical, psychological, medical or learning disability that may impact on your ability to carry out assigned course work, I would urge that you contact the staff in the Disabled Student Services office (DSS), Room 133 Humanities, 632-6748/TDD. DSS will review your concerns and determine, with you, what accommodations are necessary and appropriate. All information and documentation of disability is confidential.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Because a primary goal of the course is to teach professionalism, any academic dishonesty will be viewed as evidence that this goal has not been achieved. Any act of cheating will be treated with utmost seriousness.

You can discuss the course material with other students, but not the homework assignments themselves. In effect, you can discuss the problems but not the solutions. If you help another student with a homework, use examples that do not resemble those in the homework. Remember that there are many different ways to solve the same problem; even solutions with the same central idea can be formulated in many different ways. Therefore, suspiciously similar homework solutions will be considered as evidence of disallowed collaboration or copying.

In case you have any questions about whether an act of collaboration may constitute "cheating" please come and talk to the instructor beforehand to clarify the issue.

Copying an assignment from another student in this class or obtaining a solution from some other source will lead to an automatic F for this course and further disciplinary action. Allowing another student to copy one's work will be treated as an act of academic dishonesty, leading to the same penalty as copying.

You should learn how to protect your data. Failure to do so is also unprofessional and it may expose you to the danger that someone will copy your homework and will submit it as his or her own (see above).

C.R. Ramakrishnan