Welcome to the Spring 2010 homepage for CMPSCI 240: Reasoning About Uncertainty

  • Instructor:
  • TA:
  • Lectures:
    • Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 11:15 to 12:15 pm in ELAB 305. Discussion Friday 10:10 to 11:00 in ELAB 305.

  • Homeworks:
    • Homework 1: Posted 1/27 (Wednesday) and due 2/5 (Friday).
    • Homework 2: Posted 2/8 (Monday) and due 2/16 (Tuesday).
    • Homework 3: Posted 2/22 (Monday) and due 3/1 (Monday).
    • Homework 4: Posted 3/22 (Monday) and due 3/29 (Friday).
    • Homework 5: Posted 4/5 (Monday) and due 4/12 (Monday).
    • Homework 6: Posted 4/19 (Monday) and due 4/26 (Friday).
    • Homework 7: Posted 4/26 (Monday) and due 5/3 (Monday).

  • Programming Assignments:
    • Assignment 1: Posted January 29 (Friday) and due 11:59pm, February 18 (Thursday).
    • Assignment 2: Posted February 26 (Friday and due 11:59pm, March 11 (Thursday).
    • Assignment 3: Posted March 26 (Friday) and due 11:59pm, April 8 (Thursday).
    • Assignment 4: Posted April 9 (Friday) and due 11:59pm, April 30 (Friday).

  • Grade Breakdown:
    • Midterm Exams (30%): There will be three midterm exams each counting 10% of your grade, on Friday 12 February, 5 March, and 2 April, each using both the lecture and discussion period.
    • Final Exam (25%): This will be during the December final exam period as scheduled by the University, and will be cumulative, though with greater emphasis on the last quarter of the course. You will have two hours. This exam will count for 25% of your final grade, except that I will count it for 50%, and reduce the weights of all other components proportionally, if this is to your advantage.
    • Homework (15%): There will be eight homework assignments during the term. Together they will count for 15% of your final grade (only the best six of the eight will count, for 2.5% each). Late homework will in general not be accepted -- we'll deal with valid excuses by giving "excused" grades on particular assignments.
    • Discussions (10%): About four of the Friday discussion periods will have in-class writing assignments, usually based on "Excursion" sections of the text. You will be divided randomly into groups of two or three and each group will hand in a response to the assignment. These will be graded "check" (B) or "check-plus" (A), and the best three of your four will count for 10% of your total grade.
    • Programming Projects (20%): Each section of the course will have a programming project for which you will hand in code. The first project will be individual, and later ones may allow (student-chosen) pairs to work together. Note that exam and homework questions may refer to the body of code in the projects. The four assignments will count for 5% of your grade each. Note that some of the Friday discussion periods are devoted to introducing or working on the programming projects.

  • Academic Honesty Policy: All work submitted must be your own in presentation. How much outside help is allowed depends on the course component.

    • The exams are closed-book and no outside help is allowed. Any cheating on an exam is grounds for an F in the course.
    • For work on the programming projects, almost anything goes as a source of information, including the instructor, TA, and your classmates, but anything you present as your own work must actually be yours.
    • With homework the situation is in between and the rule harder to specify. You may discuss homework with other students, in fact I encourage this as a learning experience. But again, the writeup must be your work. Copying is not allowed, and collaboration so close that it looks like copying is not allowed. (In general, if I get two identical homeworks I will accept neither of them (i.e., both get F's) and will give you a stern warning that could lead to formal action the next time.) A good practice is to divide your work into an "ideas phase" where you collaborate and a "writeup phase" where you work alone -- enter the writeup phase with notes, but not written solutions.
    • If you make use of a printed or on-line source for the homework, other than specific course materials such as the textbook or web site, please mention it in your writeup. Of course copying a solution to a problem from the web is cheating, and this is easier for us to detect than you might think.
  • Schedule:
    Date L01 Description Readings Materials
    Wed 20 Jan L01 Course Overview Slides
    Fri 22 Jan --- No Discussion today
    Fri 22 Jan L02 Basic ProbabilityDefinitions (10.1) Slides
    Mon 25 Jan L03 The Four Counting Problems (6.1) Slides
    Wed 27 Jan L04 Sum and Product Rules (6.1) Slides
    Fri 29 Jan D01 Programming Assignment #1 Overview
    Fri 29 Jan L05 Double-Counting and Inclusion/Exclusion (6.2) Slides
    Mon 01 Feb L06 First and Second Counting Problems (6.3,6.4) Slides
    Wed 03 Feb L07 Third Counting Problem (6.6) Slides
    Fri 05 Feb D02 The Problem of Sorting (6.5)
    Fri 05 Feb L08 Counting Poker Hands (6.6) Slides
    Mon 08 Feb L09 Fourth Counting Problem (6.7) Slides
    Wed 10 Feb --- NO CLASS (Snow Day)
    Fri 12 Feb X01 FIRST MIDTERM using both periods Exam Solutions
    Mon 15 Feb --- NO CLASS (President's Day)
    Tue 16 Feb L10 (Mon Schedule) Random Variables, Expected Value (10.1,10.2) Slides
    Wed 17 Feb L11 Evaluating Games (10.3) Slides
    Fri 19 Feb D03 Analysis of Craps (10.4)
    Fri 19 Feb L12 Variance and Standard Deviation (10.5) Slides
    Mon 22 Feb L13 Variance, Binomial Distribution (10.5, 10.6) Slides
    Wed 24 Feb --- NO CLASS (Snow Day)
    Fri 26 Feb D04 Programming Assignment #2 Discussion
    Fri 26 Feb L14 Binomial Distributions, The Coupon Collector's Problem (10.6, 10.8) Slides
    Mon 01 Mar L15 Bounds on Probability (10.9, 10.11) Slides
    Wed 03 Mar L16 More Bounds on Probability (10.11) Slides
    Fri 05 Mar X02 SECOND MIDTERM using both periods Exam Solutions
    Mon 08 Mar L17 Conditional Probabilities (11.1) Slides
    Wed 10 Mar L18 Bayes' Theorem, Odds and Likelihood (11.2, 11.3) Slides
    Fri 12 Mar D05 The Police Line-Up (11.4)
    Fri 12 Mar L19 Examples of Bayesian Reasoning (11.3) Slides
    Mon 22 Mar L20 Maximum Likelihood Estimation (11.5) Slides
    Wed 24 Mar L21 The Naive Bayes Classifier and Problems with the NBC (11.5, 11.6) Slides
    Fri 26 Mar D06 Programming Project #3 Help
    Fri 26 Mar L22 Graphical Models of Distributions (11.7) Slides
    Mon 29 Mar L23 Pseudorandom Generators (11.9) Slides
    Wed 31 Mar L24 More Monte Carlo Simulation (11.10) Slides
    Fri 02 Apr X03 THIRD MIDTERM using both periods Exam Solutions
    Mon 05 Apr L25 State Machines and the Markov Rule (12.1) Slides
    Wed 07 Apr L26 Markov Chains (12.2) Slides
    Fri 09 Apr L27 Matrices and Graphs (12.2) Slides
    Fri 09 Apr D07 Programming Project #4 help
    Mon 12 Apr L28 Long-Term Behavior of Markov Processes (12.3) Slides
    Wed 14 Apr L29 Markov Decision Processes (12.5) Slides
    Fri 16 Apr L30 Horizons and Discounting (12.6) Slides
    Fri 16 Apr D08 Analysis of Blackjack (12.9)
    Mon 19 Apr --- NO CLASS (Patriot's Day)
    Wed 21 Apr L31 Classical Game Theory (12.8) Slides
    Fri 23 Apr D09 The Great 240 Game Show! Game Show!
    Mon 26 Apr L33 The Prisoners' Dilemma (13.1) Slides
    Wed 28 Apr L34 Information Theory and Error Detection Slides
    Fri 30 Apr D09 Review for Final Exam Slides
    Fri 30 Apr L35 Variable-Length Codes (13.4) Slides
    Mon 03 May L36 Finishing up Information Theory Slides
    Tue 11 May X04 Final Exam in Computer Science Building Room 142, 10:30am

    Last modified 20 January 2010