MSE 2400 Evolution and Learning in Computational & Robotic Agents

MSE 2400	Evolution and Learning in Computational & Robotic Agents	Spring 2016
Section 001	SCHEDULE	Dr. Thomas Way

Schedule is subject to change during the semester. Please check the online version on the course website from time to time.

#	Date	Topics, Assignments, Activities
1	T 1/12 W 1/13 Th 1/14	Lecture Welcome and Introduction to the Course (ppt) (pdf) Homework 1 - due 1/19/16 Babbage, Lovelace & Turing (pptx) (pdf) Video: Kevin Kelly: How technology evolves (TED talk, 20:00) Video: Charles Babbage and his Difference Engine (Computer History, 5:45) Video: Ada Lovelace - Great Minds (SciShow, 3:30) Video: Alan Turing - Great Minds (SciShow, 3:30) Video: How Do You Program Intelligence? (BBC, 5:00) Video: Are robots hurting job growth? (60 Minutes, 13:30) Lab Lab 1 - Exploring Computerized Life, Evolution and Learning (assignment) Resources Greenfoot online documentation "The fantastic combinations of John Conway's new solitaire game 'life'", Martin Gardner, Scientific American 223 (October 1970): 120-123. "ELIZA — A Computer Program for the Study of Natural Language Communication between Man and Machine," Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 9 (1966): 36-45. The Imitation Game (2014)
2	T 1/19 W 1/20 Th 1/21	Homework 1 due Tues. 1/19 Lecture Sentiment Analysis and the Fourth Paradigm (ppt) (pdf) Approaches to Sentiment Analysis (ppt) (pdf) Homework 2 - due 1/26/16 Video: How does that make you feel? Sentiment analysis in 2012, Catherine Van Zuylen, Attensity, 2012. (10:12) Video: Social Sentiment: Are You Listening? (IBM Social Media, 3:15) Video: Deb Roy: The Birth of a Word, TED Talk, 2011. (19:52) Video: Brilliant Blunders, Astrophysicist Mario Livio interview, Daily Show, Sept. 4, 2013. (6:07) Lab Lab 2 - Learning from Big Data (assignment) Resources Alex Szalay, Johns Hopkins Univ., Data Driven Discovery in Science: The Fourth Paradigm, 2012. (Talk and slides) Video: Keynote: Sentiment, Subjectivity, and Sense Jan Wiebe, University of Pittsburgh, 2012. Sentiment Analysis Symposium, New York, NY, May 8, 2012. (info, videos)
3	T 1/26 W 1/27 Th 1/28	Homework 2 due Tues. 1/26/16 Lecture Approaches to Sentiment Analysis (cont'd) - Tuesday Introduction to Machine Learning (pptx) (pdf) - Tuesday and Thursday Exploration and discussion of Homework 2 results - Thursday Homework 3 - due 2/04/16 Link: The Guessing Game - Is this Machine Learning? Link: Free-OCR - Is this Machine Learning? (example)(original) Video: A Robot Teaches Itself How to Walk (5:17) Video: George Carlin hints at Big Data (3:44) Lab Lab 2 (cont'd) Resources See "Resources" page for Python-related info and software
4	T 2/02 W 2/03 Th 2/04	Homework 3 due Thurs. 2/04/16 Lecture Machine Learning Topics - Learning Agents (pptx) (pdf) Video: Alison Gopnick: What do babies think? (TED, 18:29) Video: Rebecca Saxe: How do we read each other's minds (TED, 16:55) Video: Diana Laufenberg: How to learn? From mistakes (TED, 10:06) Homework 4 - due 2/11/16 Lab Lab 3 - Learning Agents & Decision Trees I (assignment) Resources Johnny Cab - Total Recall Movie CLIP (1990) Article: Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future Is Here (Tom Vanderbilt, Wired, Jan. 20, 2012)
5	T 2/09 W 2/10 Th 2/11	Homework 4 due Thurs. 2/11/16 Lecture Decision Trees (pptx) (pdf) Handout: Decision Tree Examples (pdf) Robot Driven Cars - How and Why? (discussion) Homework 5 - due 2/23/16 Lab Lab 4 - Learning Agents & Decision Trees II (assignment) Resources Video: The Great Robot Race (Nova, PBS, 52:51)
6	T 2/16 W 2/17 Th 2/18	Lecture Decision Tree Example (pptx) (pdf) - Tuesday Play Tennis Data (pdf) Neural Networks (pptx) (pdf) - Thursday Midterm Exam Study Guide (pdf) Lab Lab 5 (assignment) Screen Capture - Windows: Fn+Alt+Prnt Scrn, Mac: ⌘+Shift+3 Resources Neural Networks, A Simple Explanation (YouTube) (1:47) Intro to Neural Networks (YouTube) (7:49) Neural Network Demo (YouTube) (2:41) Building Neural Networks in Simbrain (YouTube) (22:00, first 13:00) Evolving Artificial Neural Network (YouTube) (9:52) Running Windows on a Mac using WineBottler (it works!)
7	T 2/23 W 2/24 Th 2/25	Homework 5 due Tues. 2/23/16 Lecture Neural Networks (cont'd) - Tuesday Homework 5 peer evaluation in-class - Tuesday Sebatian Seung: I am my connectome (TED Talk, 19:25) Midterm exam - Thursday, 2/25/16, 2:30 to 3:45pm Lab Lab 5 (cont'd) (assignment) (NEW Extra Handout) Resources Marvin Minsky on health and the human mind (TED Talk, 13:31)
8	T 3/01 W 3/02 Th 3/03	No class meetings for Spring Break
9	T 3/08 W 3/09 Th 3/10	Lecture Midterm Exam discussion - Tuesday Introduction to Classification & Clustering Module (pptx) - Thursday Classification & Clustering (pptx) (pdf) Video: What is Text Classification (8:12) Classification activity handout (pdf) Neural Network Fun Activity - Good Grade Predictor! (handout) Lab Lab 6 - Programming with Python (assignment) Resources How Big Data Is Changing the Whole Equation for Business, Steven Rosenbush and Michael Totty, Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2013. Video: Raffaello D'Andrea: The astounding athletic power of quadcopters (TED, 16:08)
10	T 3/15 W 3/16 Th 3/17	Lecture Classification & Clustering (cont'd) Homework 6 - due 3/24/16 (or earlier) Video: Naive Bayes (3:19) Video: Formalizing the Naive Bayes Classifier (9:28) Video: Practical Issues in Text Classification (5:56) Video: SVM Demo (5:28) Demo: Interactive Support Vector Machine vs. Neural Network vs. Naive Bayes Lab Lab 6 - Programming with Python (cont'd) (assignment) Resources Natural Language Processing - Stanford online course
11	T 3/22 W 3/23 Th 3/24	Homework 6 due Thurs. 3/24/16 or earlier Thurs. 3/24/16, no lecture class meeting, Easter Break Lecture Classification & Clustering (cont'd) - Tuesday Activity: Class-ification Video: One of These Things (Sesame Street, YouTube, 3:54) Video: What we learned from 5 million books (TED Talk, 14:09) Lab Lab 7 - Designing a Classifier (assignment) Resources Using AI or something similar in advertising? (video) Impress your friends, fool your roommate with HackerTyper.com He Has Millions and a New Job at Yahoo. Soon, He’ll Be 18. NY Times, March 26, 2013.
12	T 3/29 W 3/30 Th 3/31	Lecture Tuesday Problem Solving using Programming (pptx) (pdf) Video: Working backward to solve problems - Maurice Ashley (5:56) Video: Clifford Stoll: The call to learn (TED Talk, 17:54) Word counter program created during class (s13) (f13) (s14) (s15) (s16) (declaration.txt) Thursday Problem Solving using Programming (cont'd) Video: Science quote from The Martian (YouTube, 0:08) Extend word counter (big.txt) Dr. Way's theory of learning - human's (and other creatures) are built for classifying, seeing connections in everything (even when there aren't any), which is the foundation of how we learn, and also the foundation of all conflict and community. Thoughts? Adele Dazeem Generator Video: Microsoft Tay Twitter Chatbot (USA Today, 1:04) (news story) Chatbots: Mitsuku, Trump, Two Chatbots Talking, Zabaware Python-based Chatbot code Video: George Carlin: Football vs Baseball (YouTube, 4:48) Lab Lab 7 (cont'd), time to finish up other labs Resources Google Ngram Viewer - search millions of books Online learning: Rock-Paper-Scissors: You vs. the Computer Video: Cooperative Quadrocopter Ball Throwing and Catching (1:49) Flying Machine Arena web site Video: Students Compete to Design and Race Autonomous Surface Vehicles in the RoboBoat Competition
13	T 4/05 W 4/06 Th 4/07	Tues. 4/05/16, no lecture class meeting due to we're number one! Lecture Genetic Algorithms (pptx) (pdf) Video: Shyam Sankar: The rise of human-computer cooperation (TED Talk, 12:12) Genetic Algorithms in action: Light-Bot Genetic Algorithms Genetic Algorithm Hello World Curve Fitting BoxCar2D breve - artificial life simulation (software) Lab Lab 8 - Exploring Robot Life? (assignment)
14	T 4/12 W 4/13 Th 4/14	Lecture Gregor Mendel (pptx) (pdf) & Charles Darwin (pptx) (pdf) Problem Solving with NLTK (pptx) (pdf) (4/22) Video: Evolution, Bill Nye the Science Guy (YouTube) (23:00) Homework 7 - due 4/21/16 Video: Charles Darwin (YouTube) (6:20) Video: Gregor Mendel (YouTube) (2:35) Video: What is the Turing Test? (YouTube) (1:54) Video: Genetic Engineering (YouTube) (4:39) Video: How do computers learn a new language? (YouTube) (6:29) Video: Narrative Analysis (YouTube) (5:00) Video: What is Big Data? (YouTube) (1:33) Lab Lab 9 - Genetic Algorithms and Robotics (assignment) Resources Natural Language Processing with NLTK (online book) Demo: Chapter 6 - Natural Language Processing with Python Program: posplot.py
15	T 4/19 W 4/20 Th 4/21	Homework 7 due Thur. 4/21/16 Lecture Binary and Decimal Numbers (pptx) (pdf) Robotics (pptx) (pdf) Review Straitjacket escape (YouTube) Activity: Evolution & Learning in Nature vs. Machines - learning to juggle, animal learning, counting the number of tiny holes in the acoustic tiles, etc. (tbd) Images: Dot Counting Approaches, Dot Counting Solution Final Exam Study Guide (pdf) CATS Lab Lab 10 - Evolving Robot Behavior (assignment) Resources Video: Origin of Species (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5)
16	T 4/26 W 4/27 Th 4/28	T 4/26, no class meeting, follows a Friday schedule W 4/27, no lab class meeting, follows a Monday schedule Lecture Th 4/28 - no formal lecture, virtual electronic discussion, individual review sessions as needed, in-class lab work session (2:30-3:45, Mendel G86) Lab Lab 10 (finish up time)
	F 4/29	READING DAY
17	M 5/02	FINAL EXAM (Villanova schedule) Mon. May 2, 2016, 2:30 pm - 5:00 pm Mendel Science Center G86 (our regular lecture classroom)

Last updated: 04/19/2016