Special Topic Report
This assignment is out of 100 points total and is 10% of your final grade.
You will be turning it in as two separate parts.
For each of the seven special topics classes (10/29 to 11/19), you will be required to write
a short summary of the talk.
The first set of writeups is due 11/10 and will summarize: Adam Anthony's talk on Clustering,
Blaz Bulka's talk on Planning, and the UMBC Graduate Student Research day.
The second set of writeups is due 12/1 and will summarize: The DARPA grand challenge,
Tim Oates' talk on Robotics, Scott Elson's talk on AI in video games, and Marc Pickett's talk
I strongly suggest you take notes so that you can remember specific facts about the talk later
on.
The Ben Goertzel Colloquium talk is worth 1% extra credit (10 points: 3 points for attendance, 7 points for the writeup).
Here is how the grading will work for this assignment:
- 4 points for attendance of 7 days (4x7 = 28)
- 10 points for each of 7 writeups (10x7 = 70)
- 2 points for stapling and printing out your work
If you miss a class (for whatever reason) (except for the DARPA grand challenge lecture),
you are expected to write a detailed survey report on the topic covered. You must
find sources from books and published papers. Online sources and your classmates' notes
may be used to get started in finding information, but must not be your only sources.
The writeup:
For each special lecture, summarize the major points and interesting content talked about. That is,
write it out as a summary article, not a bulleted list answering the questions below one by one.
I will be annoyed
if you simply answer question by question in sentence format. These questions are meant as a
guideline of what you should write about.
Your writeups should still flow well and make sense.
Also, some questions might not be applicable or worth answering.
Approximately, each writeup should be 1/2 to a full page (single spaced, times roman, 10 point font)
(note: I don't care about the font, size or spacing... this is just a baseline).
You will be graded based on content and thoughtfulness, not on length. Therefore, if you can summarize
up the talk in less, or you have extra you would like to talk about, go for it.
Grammar
counts and spelling counts to an extent, so please proofread your text.
Some ideas of what to cover in your writeup:
- Introduce the TOPIC covered: how it relates to the grand scheme of AI, what is the basic
premise, what are the people trying to do in this area, who are the big names, etc.
- What are some interesting things about this topic that make it hard?
- What makes this research different from other branches of AI?
- What are some specific and general domains for this research or work?
- Were there any preconceptions going into this talk that were changed or reaffirmed after hearing about it?
- If the speaker talks about personal research in this field, what are his or her contributions?
- (If the speaker is a guest)
Who are the speakers or researchers?
What are they all about? What are they interested in doing?
- What are some things that particularly interested you? Did your mind race to possible
applications, possible extensions or things you would like to look into deeper?
- How useful do you think the content presented was to you personally and to the AI community?
- If you did any outside research after the talk (strongly encouraged), what did you find?
- Talk about whatever else you think is interesting about this topic or this talk.