CS 30 TOPICS TO REVIEW FOR FINAL EXAM

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GENERAL TOPICS:

Turing Test
  - Know what it is
  - Relevant readings:
    * Computing Machinery and Intelligence (Turing)
    * A Coffeehouse Conversation on the Turing Test (Hofstadter)

Formal systems
  - Know what they are
  - MIU.py from week 7
  - Relevant readings:
    * The MIU-Puzzle (Hofstadter)

Turing machines
  - Know what they are
  - Be able to trace through a simple TM program by hand
  - Be able to design a (very) simple TM program to do something
  - Know what "busy beaver" TMs are
  - Know what the Halting Problem is and why it is important
  - Understand the basic outline of the Halting Problem argument
  - Know what Universal Turing Machines are and why they are important
  - UTM.py from week 8
  - Relevant readings:
    * Proof or Consequences (Casti)

Symbolic models
  - Know what they are, and how they differ from connectionist models
  - Winograd's SHRDLU, Weizenbaum's Eliza, Schank's story-understanding
    programs, Winston's Analogy program, Waltz's vision program (see
    Dreyfus article for descriptions of these and other symbolic AI programs)
  - Newell & Simon's physical symbol system hypothesis
  - Relevant readings:
    * From Micro-Worlds to Knowledge Representation (Dreyfus)
    * Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry (Newell & Simon)

Chinese Room thought experiment
  - Understand the basic outline of the argument
  - Relevant readings:
    * Minds, Brains, and Programs (Searle)
    * A Conversation With Einstein's Brain (Hofstadter)
    * The Chinese Room: Just Say No! (French)

Connectionist models
  - Know what they are, and how they differ from symbolic models
  - Jets and Sharks memory model
  - jetsNsharks.py from week 10
  - Perceptron and backpropagation neural networks
  - Perceptron.py and SigmoidNeuron.py from week 11
  - Localist vs. distributed neural network representations
  - digits.py from week 12
  - Elman's experiments on learning grammatical structure with neural networks
  - Relevant readings:
    * The Appeal of PDP (McClelland, Rumelhart, Hinton)
    * Why Connectionism? (Elman et al.)
    * Connectionist Modeling: Neural Computation/Mental Connections (Smolensky)
    * Finding Structure in Time (Elman)

Embodied cognition
  - Know why embodiment is important
  - Braitenberg vehicles
  - Braitenberg's "Law of uphill analysis and downhill invention"
  - Brooks's subsumption architecture for robots
  - SubsumptionFindLight.py from week 15
  - Relevant readings:
    * Vehicles (Braitenberg)
    * Intelligence Without Representation (Brooks)
    * The Chinese Room: Just Say No! (French)

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PROGRAMMING TOPICS:

arithmetic operations
  + - * / %
  int, float

storing values in variables
  x = 3
  x, y = 1, 2

getting input from the user
  input vs. raw_input

printing output on the screen
  print
  string formatting with %f, %d, %s

for loops
  using range
  for x in sequence:
  for i in range(len(sequence)):

understand the difference between looping
through a sequence of values directly vs.
using an index number

while loops

simple decisions using if-else

function definitions
  def name(param1, param2, param3):
  return value

retrieving and storing values in lists
  values[i]
  values[-i]
  values[m:n]
  values[i] = newval

using random numbers
   random.uniform
   random.randrange
   random.choice

manipulating strings
   s[i]
   string.split
   string.join
   s1 + s2
   other string library functions (see the
   table on page 96 of the Python book)

reading lines from a file
   f = open(filename)
   lines = f.readlines()
   f.close()

manipulating lists
  - referencing values in lists
  - storing values in lists
  - appending values to lists
  - MIU.py from week 7
  - UTM.py from week 8

file processing
  - opening and closing files
  - using readlines
  - UTM.py from week 8

object-oriented programming
  - using objects
  - defining classes
  - defining methods
  - self keyword
  - __str__ method
  - __init__ method
  - gossip.py from week 10, Perceptron.py and SigmoidNeuron.py from week 11
  - extending classes: ClockRadio.py from week 12