The link to the COMP4418 Final Exam is now available .
The final exam will be held today and has a time allowance of 2 hours and 45 minutes.
Students with an ELP should have their exam duration automatically adjusted.
The exam must be started and completed on Monday 30 November, between 13:00 and 16:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEDT).
Referee contact: If any questions arise, I'll be contactable by email (
morri@unsw.edu.au
) between 13:00 and 16:00 on Monday 30 November, AEDT.
Dear class,
As you know, we wanted to give you time for assignment 3 and the deadline was set to 25th Nov. This has not given us sufficient time to give you feedback on your submission. My PhD student Alex Lam has been working hard for the past two days to grade as many of the assignments.
In case you are really anxious about your performance in assignment 3 or have particular queries about some part, Alex has graciously agreed to try to give you brief and tentative feedback.
His email address is alexander.lam1@unsw.edu.au
Please keep in mind that it is plausible that Alex has not yet graded your assignment. His response rate will also depend on how many students make a special request for some feedback. Finally, any such feedback should not be confused with the final marks on the assignment. It will require us more time to finalise the marks.
All the best in the exam!
Cheers,
Haris
A reminder that the COMP4418 Final Exam will be this coming Monday, 30 November.
The final exam has a time allowance of 2 hours and 45 minutes.
Students with an ELP should have their exam duration automatically adjusted.
The exam must be started and completed on Monday 30 November, between 13:00 and 16:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEDT).
Referee contact: If any questions arise, I'll be contactable by email (
morri@unsw.edu.au
) between 13:00 and 16:00 on Monday 30 November, AEDT.
The
UNSW Online Exam Preparation Checklist
is a very useful resource and I would encourage you all to review it before the COMP4418 exam next week.
You may also find these instructions for the COMP4418 Exam Moodle Text Editor helpful.
Dear all,
Assignment 2 results are now available via give.
The average mark is around 80 and the maximum mark is 100. Most people got most marks for Q1 and Q2 whereas Q3 (usually) was a step harder with a strict marking scheme so the results were more mixed but still good overall. I hope you have learned a lot from completing this assignment.
From a technical point of view, part C of the exam (the ASP part, notwithstanding some ASP multiple-choice questions in part A) is of difficulty comparable to Q2. But it is presented in a way kind of similar to Q3 with some intermediate subquestions. From a psychological point of view, because the exam conditions are a bit more stressful than the assignment, part C will be a bit harder, than Q2.
Two final suggestions for preparing for part C. If you feel that you struggle a bit on the technical level, watch the video solution of assignment 2, then re-do assignment 2 from scratch without looking at the video nor at your own submission. (And of course, you can also go back to some worked-out examples in the interactive lectures).
If you feel confident with your understanding of the technical aspect, then you can work on the psychological aspect by practicing on new problems: this will help you come up with encodings faster on a more diverse range of problems, so it will lower the stress of the exam; also, practicing modelling skills will be useful later on in your career for most of you. How to find new problems? Have a look at the following wikipedia lists of problems, in each case, you can click on the link and read more about a problem. Try a) to come up with an encoding of the input data, b) encode of the problem itself, c) invent some input files for testing purposes. Of course, not all problems will lend themselves to easy modelling in ASP, so feel free to move on to a different problem if one of them resists you. Or ask for help or feedback on the forum! Other students may have ideas, and I'll try to pop by every now and then to check and help you too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NP-complete_problems
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karp's_21_NP-complete_problems
The UNSW Online Exam Preparation Checklist is a very useful resource and I would encourage you all to review it before the COMP4418 exam next week.
If you haven't done so already, can I please encourage you to complete the myExperience survey for COMP4418 and also its lecturing staff? Comments on what worked and what could be improved will assist us in improving this course and are greatly appreciated by all of us.
You have until midnight this Thursday 26 November to complete the survey(s).
Dear all,
I decided not to provide directly a pdf solution file for assignment 2 to encourage you to spend a bit more time thinking about it. Just like Morri, I am concerned that some of you may want to quickly check a template solution but won't fully engage with it and can miss out on learning opportunities. At the same time, I recognize that having access to some detailed reasoning for how to solve these problems can be helpful to you both in preparing for the final exam and also for getting your head around this part of the course once and for all. So the compromise I found is to prepare and upload a video of me walking through a template solution for this assignment, you'll find it on echo360. Note that the template solution I discuss in the video is one among many valid answers, so please don't worry if you answered something different. It can definitely be correct even if you use a different approach.
Of course, I'm happy to discuss the walkthrough I propose as well as alternative solutions some of you may have come up with. So just come and chat in the forum, don't hesitate to ask questions over there (and even better, don't hestitate to answer each other's questions as I know I'm going to be super busy over the next couples days and I might not be as reactive as I would like to be).
NB: To be clear, this is an invitation to discuss solutions and solution attempts so as to help you understand the material better as you prepare for the final. I am not so interested in discussing marking, grades, points, and similar details (and I don't even have enough time for it). Especially as the marking for assignment 2 is still taking place these days (with a very helpful tutor).
Cheers,
Abdallah
This is a slightly lengthy post but gives you some details regarding the COMP4418 Final Exam. Please take the time to read it it and post any questions.
The 2020 Term 3 COMP4418: Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Final Exam
The final exam has a time allowance of 2 hours and 45 minutes.
Students with an ELP should have their exam duration automatically adjusted.
The exam must be started and completed on Monday 30 November, between 13:00 and 16:00 Australian Eastern Standard Time (AEDT).
Referee contact: If any questions arise, I'll be contactable by email (
morri@unsw.edu.au
) between 13:00 and 16:00 on Monday 30 November, AEDT.
I'll email any resulting announcements to the entire course, though I'm unlikely to announce any changes and will likely scale any significant issues out of the exam to be fair to those who completed the exam early.
Note 1: It's very rare I get a question as referee under normal exam conditions, and the answer is usually "the question is as it is written". I'm not expecting it to be any different in an online environment.
Note 2: You'll have to quote the exam question in any correspondence as question numbers will be different for every student.
Note 3: You must use your UNSW email to send any questions. I will also investigate the use of MS Teams for questions (I will provide an update before the exam).
There is a Practice Exam on Moodle for you to familiarise yourself with the format, marking, and submission. It's also a study aid.
EXAM DETAILS
------------------
TERM 3 2020 EXAMINATION
COMP4418
Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
Time allowed: 2 hours 45 minutes
Total Number of questions: 26
Total marks available: 100
Marks available for each question are shown on each question. The start of each section describes how marks are awarded or reduced in the specific section.
The exam has 4 parts:
* Part A consists of 20 multiple choice questions. Each question has 5 alternatives. Each question in this section is worth 2 marks. There is a penalty of −0.5 marks for answering a question in this section incorrectly. There is no penalty for not answering a question. In other words, you get no marks for a question if you do not attempt it and you lose half a mark for getting a question wrong.
* Part B consists of 2 short answer questions worth a total of 20 marks relating to the Introduction to KRR, Formal Logic and Reasoning, Commonsense Reasoning.
* Part C consists of 2 short answer questions worth a total of 20 marks relating to the Non-monotonic Reasoning, Reasoning about Actions.
* Part D consists of 2 short answer questions worth a total of 20 marks relating to the Decision Making.
The examination is open book. Candidates may bring to the examination:
* A device to access the Moodle quiz via the Internet
* Pens, pencils and paper for problem solving.
* Any notes, lecture slides, source code, or textbooks.
By starting this exam as a student of The University of New South Wales, you do solemnly and sincerely declare that you have not seen any part of this specific examination paper for the above course prior to attempting this exam, nor have any details of the exam's contents been communicated to you. In addition, during the exam you will not communicate with anyone except the Course Convenor. Violation of this agreement is considered Academic Misconduct and penalties may apply.
FIT TO SIT
----------
By sitting or submitting an assessment on the scheduled assessment date, a student is declaring that they are fit to do so and cannot later apply for Special Consideration.
If, during an exam a student feels unwell to the point that they cannot continue with the exam, they should take the following steps:
1. Stop working on the exam and take note of the time.
2. Contact the Course Coordinator immediately and advise them that they are unwell.
3. Immediately submit a Special Consideration application saying that they felt ill during the exam and were unable to continue.
4. If they were able to advise the Course Coordinator during the assessment, attach screenshots of this conversation to the Special Consideration application.
TECHNICAL ISSUES
----------------
If students experience a technical issue, they should take the following steps:
1. Take screenshots of as many of the following as possible:
* error messages
* screen not loading
* timestamped speed tests
* power outage maps
2. Contact the Course Coordinator immediately to advise them of the issue.
3. A Special Consideration application should be submitted immediately after the conclusion of the assessment, along with the appropriate screenshots.
We have made available a short COMP4418 Practice Exam for you to get some experience with the exam environment we will be using for the COMP4418 Final Exam.
This Practice Exam has 7 multiple choice questions and 3 short answer questions (one question for each section of the course). Please try it and feel free to discuss it in the course Forum.
We will be providing a more detailed description of the nature of the final exam on Thursday this week.
Assignment 3 is now uploaded. Please note the deadline of 25th Nov.
Good luck!
The videos and slides for this week were uploaded early this week.
Please take a look at them before the interactive sessions this week. Please note the interactive session videos from last week have also been uploaded.
The Wednesday interactive sessions will be at the regular time of 1-3pm. The link is https://unsw.zoom.us/j/88117745789 and applies to weeks 8, 9, and 10.
The Thursday interactive sessions will be at the regular time of 4-6pm.The link is https://unsw.zoom.us/j/86045372863 and applies to weeks 8, 9, and 10.
Thank you and best wishes,
Haris Aziz
Assignment 1 results are now available via give.
The average mark was 57.32 and the maximum mark was 92.
I was very pleased to see the effort that was put into answering the questions. This was a challenging assignment and I hope you have learned a lot from completing it.
Dear all,
A few students asked for being allowed to submit their assignment after the deadline and incur a late penalty. After giving it much thought and weighing the pros and cons, I've decided to allow late submissions with a penalty of 25% or the raw mark per day. This means that if your normal mark is 80, then instead you get 60 if you submit one day late, and you get 40 if you submit two days late etc.
Pros:
* Some students didn't organized to submit their assignment on time. They are used to the submission deadline being flexible, and somehow assumed that this assignment would have allow submissions past the deadline. Now they will have the possibility to work for a few more hours/days on it at the cost of significant chunks of marks.
* The late penalty is harsh, which means that there is strong incentive to submitting on time and the students who did submit on time problably won't regret doing so because 25% per day is a lot.
Cons:
* It's not good to introduce a modification in the modalities of the assignment so late in the game. It can be confusing or frustrating to some (especially students who did organize their other commitments to meet the deadline). I'm sorry about that.
* University is meant to educate you and prepare you for your future professional life. Being able to follow deadlines is part of it and by introducing flexibility in this Assignment 2, I miss out on a teaching opportunity to insist on the importance of adhering to originally set deadlines.
** For instance, when I apply to a research grant with a funding agency, I don't have any flexibility with the deadline. This situation actually happened to me a few years ago: I submitted a grant to some european research agency for funding for 3 years (several hundreds of thousands of euros were at stake), but I got the deadline wrong: I thought it was close to midnight (11:59pm) and it was actually at noon (11:59am). I submitted early afternoon at 1pm and the committee didn't even look at my application. Next opportunity for me to apply was one whole year later. That was my mistake to play it risky and wait for the last day.
** Same thing with paper submission. I can't submit a research paper to a conference after the deadline, the system just doesn't let me upload my paper and I need to wait a few months or the next year for the next opportunity.
** Same thing in industry. I called a friend today to ask her about late penalties in industry. She worked as a software engineer for Australia Post, IBM, Google, and some start-ups. She said that if she doesn't adhere to some deadline, then she would miss out on promotion and career advancement, and if her group doesn't adhere to the deadline of a contrat where they need to deliver some software, there are very significant financial penalties.
Anyway, long story short, some of you asked for the possibility of submitting late. I thought about it and I tried to find some middle way (allow it with harsh late penalties) that would be fair and flexible at the same time. I'm not happy about it, but there's no easy solution.
Kind regards,
Abdallah
PS: of course if you have a legitimate reason for not submitting by the standard deadline and if you are granted an official extension (typically being registered with ELS), then you get a different later deadline and only incur penalties if you go beyond your later deadline.
Haris and I have agreed that the first 15 minutes of tomorrow's interactive lecture at 1pm will be devoted to answering any questions you have on Assignment 2. Please join us tomorrow.
Also, I've corrected an inconsistency in Q2 assignment (the target in the example did not match the text of the question, I've substituted target(3) with target(4) to make sure 4 vertices and 3 edges are selcted in the example.)
Welcome to Week 8! I will be handling the last three weeks of the term.
Our topic for this week is multiagent resource allocation.
The lecture slides and videos for Week 8 have been posted online. Please check them out before the interactive sessions on Wednesday and Thursday.
The Wednesday interactive sessions will be at the regular time of 1-3pm.
The link is https://unsw.zoom.us/j/88117745789 and applies to weeks 8, 9, and 10.
The Thursday interactive sessions will be at the regular time of 4-6pm.
The link is https://unsw.zoom.us/j/86045372863 and applies to weeks 8, 9, and 10.
Thank you and best wishes,
Haris Aziz
Hi all,
I have uploaded the interactive lectures for this week as well as some of the materials I used this term. In particular, I've uploaded the files in the modelling of mapf problems, boolean circuits, tile puzzles, zebra puzzles, the N-queens puzzle.
I also wanted to share with you a youtube link with video recordings from a recent conference https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLd_hcmfMPvA... You can find on it some presentations relevant to our study of Answer Set Programming, Multi-Agent Pathfinding and Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. The presentations were given as part of the Symposium on Combinatorial Search research conference in May 2020. In particular, I would like to point your attention to a few specific videos:
* Video 4 is an introduction to ASP aimed at researchers. It could be interesting if you want to hear a slightly different take on what ASP is about and see some different applications than I used in this course.
* Video 13 examines how a deeper understanding of Multi-Agent Pathfinding can help significantly boost the encoding of the problem in a few Knowledge Representation languages (in this case, constraints programming and mixed integer programming).
* Video 11 is a series of short presentations by various researchers around the world of their latest discoveries on the topic of Multi-Agent pathfinding that we've examined today.
* Finally, there's Video 2 where I'm giving an introductory talk about algorithms for solving strategy games like Chess and Go. This isn't directly connected to COMP4418 so I'm not suggesting you watch it, but in case you're curious...
Have a good weekend!
Abdallah
Hi all,
I've uploaded assignment 2. It has 3 exercises of increasing difficulty. I will set up the submission system in a few days but you can start having a look already. I'm happy to take questions on the assignment this week at the interactive lecture as well as next week (at a time to be confirmed. I will take questions before or after Haris' lectures based on his preference and this will be announced on this website).
Best,
Abdallah
Hi all,
Just a short message to confirm we will have the last two interactive lectures on ASP this week as the usual time.
* Wednesday, October 28 1pm-3pm .
* Thursday, October 29 4pm-6pm .
I am finalizing the assignment which I'll upload later today.
See you in a bit!
Assignment 1 submission is now available via give.
Hello everyone,
I've uploaded another video on ASP to echo360 and I've scheduled the interactive lectures for today and tomorrrow.
* 1pm-3pm Wednesday 14 October
* 4pm-6pm Thursday 15 October (Just like last week, Morri will actually start the session so that he can answer any of your questions about Assignment 1. I'll take over after about 15min).
See you this afternoon!
Abdallah
Hi all,
I've uploaded the recording from yesterday's interactive lecture.
As a reminder, here some suggested puzzles/tasks that you can attempt to encode in ASP to get yourself some experience with the language and methodology.
* See if you can adapt what we did in the lecture to larger instances of "Greek Logic" ( https://www.brainzilla.com/logic/greek-logic/ )
* Knights and Knaves puzzles
https://philosophy.hku.hk/think/logic/knights.php
(we did Puzzle 1 yesterday, I suggest trying at least Puzzle 2)
* Zebra puzzles https://www.brainzilla.com/logic/zebra/ (we did Basic 1 yesterday, I suggest trying at least Basic 2 and Basic 3).
* Sudoku (for instance
https://www.websudoku.com/images/example-steps.htm...
has an instance and its solution)
* Computing Salem-Spencer sets (read about them on https://www.quantamagazine.org/to-win-this-numbers-game-learn-to-avoid-math-patterns-20200507/ and another relevant resource is http://www.math.uni.wroc.pl/~jwr/non-ave/ )
Of course, you can come up with your own puzzles and tasks to solve with ASP and if you find any good/interesting ones, feel free to share with others on the forum.
All the best and see you next Wednesday!
Abdallah
Hi all, I've uploaded two more recordings on echo360 as well as the recording of Wednesday's interactive lecture.
See you at the Thursday afternoon interactive lecture!
Abdallah and I have agreed that the first 15 minutes of tomorrow's interactive lecture at 4pm will be devoted to answering any questions you have on Assignment 1. Please join us tomorrow.
I have now uploaded two recordings for the beginning of the Week 4 lecture. Please have a look before Wednesday's interactive lecture on MS Teams.
I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday.
The Assignment 1 specification is now available and is due at 23:59:59 Sunday 18 October (Week 5). We will be discussing the assignment during tomorrow's interactive lecture.
The pre-recorded lectures on Prolog are now available.
I have now updated some of the lecture slides and have uploaded the 3 lecture recordings for Week 3: Implementing Formal Reasoning, Commonsense Reasoning with another 5 to follow for Week 3: A Programming Language based on First-Order Logic – Prolog.
This week's interactive lectures will be held at the following times via MS Teams (click on the links at the appropriate time to join the meeting):
These interactive lectures will be recorded.
Assignment 1 will also be released this week and discussed at the Thursday interactive lecture.
I look forward to seeing you at these interactive lectures.
I have now updated some of the lecture slides and am currently uploading 3 lecture recordings with another 2 to follow tomorrow (Tuesday).
This week's interactive lectures will be held at the following times via MS Teams (click on the links at the appropriate time to join the meeting):
These interactive lectures will be recorded.
I would encourage as many of you as possible to attend these interactive lectures. They provide you with an opportunity to ask questions and make sure that your understanding of the concepts is correct. Your attendance and questions will also help your fellow students. I look forward to seeing you at these interactive lectures.
Thanks very much to those of you who attended today's interactive lecture.
Tomorrow's (Thursday 17 September) interactive lecture will be held via MS Teams. It will start at 4pm (Sydney time; AEST) and end at 5pm. You will need to be logged in with your UNSW zID to access this lecture. This event will be recorded.
You can access the lecture via this MS Teams link .
I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow.
Tomorrow's (Wednesday 16 September) interactive lecture will be held via MS Teams. It will start at 2pm (Sydney time; AEST) and end at 3pm. You will need to be logged in with your UNSW zID to access this lecture. This event will be recorded.
You can access the lecture via this MS Teams link .
I look forward to seeing you all tomorrow.
I have now uploaded several Week 1 lectures that are available from the Lecture Recordings link in the menu bar to the left.
Can you please start viewing these lectures.
On Wednesday I will have an interactive online session from 2-3pm. At this session we will:
I would encourage you to start going through this material from 1-2pm, during our regular lecture time, if you haven't done so already.
I will provide more details on how Wednesday's 2-3pm class will run before the lecture. We will also do something similar during Thursday's lecture time.
It would be a great help to have your feedback through the Forums or email.
I look forward to seeing you on-line at Wednesdays' class.
Welcome to the course COMP4418: Knowledge Representation and Reasoning.
This course will be starting next week.
Please take some time to read the Course Outline and to view the Welcome Video available via the Lecture Recordings link in the menu bar to the left.
Early next week lecture videos will be available for next week's lectures.
We will use part of the lecture times on Wednesdays and Thursdays for interactive sessions where you can ask questions and we will go through problems. These will be recorded and available from the Lecture Recordings . In the remainder of the lecture time we suggest you work on COMP4418 activities (watching lecture videos, tackling exercises and working on assignments, etc.). More details will be provided next week.
On behalf of Abdallah, Haris and myself, welcome to COMP4418. We hope that you will learn a lot in this course. We're very much looking forward to this year's offerings and meeting you during our online classes.