Introduction to Computational Intelligence 2-IKV-115

The course objectives are to make the students familiar with basic principles of various computational methods of data processing that can commonly be called computational intelligence (CI). This includes mainly bottom-up approaches to solutions of (hard) problems based on various heuristics (soft computing), rather than exact approaches of traditional artificial intelligence based on logic (hard computing). Examples of CI are nature-inspired methods (artificial neural networks, evolutionary algorithms, fuzzy systems), as well as probabilistic methods and reinforcement learning. After the course the students will be able to conceptually understand the important terms and algorithms of CI, and choose appropriate method(s) for a given task. The theoretical lectures are combined with the seminar where the important concepts will be discussed and practical examples will be shown.


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Exam: The list of questions is here. You will choose three questions (pseudo)randomly.


Course schedule

Type Day Time Room Lecturer
Lecture Monday 9:00 - 10:30 I-9 Igor Farkaš
Seminar Thursday 14:00 - 15:30 I-9 Endre Hamerlik & Igor Farkaš


Syllabus

Date Topic References
22.09. 16:30 (special date/time) What is computational intelligence, basic concepts, relation to artificial intelligence. Craenen & Eiben (2003); wikipedia; R&N (2010), chap.1; Sloman (2002)
28.09. Taxonomy of artificial agents, nature of environments. R&N (2010), chap.2
05.10. Inductive learning via observations, decision trees. Model selection. R&N (2010), ch.18.1-3,18.6; Marsland (2009), ch.6.1-2, visualization, interactive demo
12.10. Supervised learning in feedforward neural networks (perceptrons), pattern classification, function approximation. R&N (2010), ch.18.2; Marsland (2009), ch.2-3, Engelbrecht (2007), ch.2-3
19.10. Unsupervised (self-organizing) neural networks: feature extraction, data visualization. Marsland (2009), ch.9-10, Engelbrecht (2007), ch.4
26.10. Statistical learning, probabilistic models. R&N (2010), ch.13,20.1-2; Marsland (2009), ch.8.1-2
05.11. Thursday: mid-term test
09.11. Reinforcement learning I: basic principles and learning methods (TD-learning). Prediction problem. R&N (2010), ch.21.1-2.
16.11. Reinforcement learning II (Q, SARSA), actor-critic, control problem, RL for continuous domains. R&N (2010), ch.21.3-5; Woergoetter & Porr (2008).
23.11. Evolutionary computation: basic concepts, genetic algorithms. Engelbrecht (2007), ch.8
30.11. Fuzzy systems, fuzzy logic and reasoning. Engelbrecht (2007), ch.20-21; Zadeh (2007)

Note: Dates refer to lectures, seminars will be on day+3 each week.

References

Course grading

  • Active participation during the lectures/exercises (35%): 15 for lectures, 20 for exercises.
  • Written mid-term test (30%).
  • Final written-oral exam (30%): you will choose 3 questions, minimum of 1/3 of all points required.
  • Small final project (10%) = implementation of a small neural network (using an existing Python library) and writing a short report. Note: even without this, the student can still get maximum points if s/he has performed very actively.
  • Overall grading: A (>90%), B (>80%), C (>70%), D (>60%), E (>50%), Fx (otherwise).