This page contains details of any updates to the course page, and
information about new postings - do be sure to check it frequently for
new updates and announcements. All new updates will be in RED, and old news changed to BLACK.
- (11/22) Homework 10 has been made
available for download in the Homework
section, and is due at start of class on December 1, 2004.
Homework 10 is a thought-only assignment that I trust you will find
entertaining and useful in putting all your modeling skills to use. I
have also added a new section in the Extra Handouts section called Machine Learning and
Related Topics, which contains papers and Matlab programs that I used
to demonstrate the machine learning techniques (Temporal Difference
Leanring) in the previous lecture.
- (11/03)
Homeworks 8 and 9 have
been made available for download in the Homework section. Homework 9 is due at
start-of-class on November 10, 2004, at 7:20 pm.
- (10/20) Homework 7 has been made
available for download in the Homework
section. It is due at start of class on October 27, 2004, at 7:20 pm.
- (10/20) The classic paper by
Nguyen and Widrow that discusses their approach for initializing
weights in a manner that avoids entrapments in local minima (for
backpropagation training) has been added to theNeural Networks category
in the Extra Handouts section.
The technique described in this paper has been implemented in the initnw
function of the Neural Network toolbox from Matlab. You should also
do a search for notes and discussions on this topic at the Neural Networks Warehouse.
- (10/19) I have added several extra
links on pointers to information repositories on Neural networks and
frequently asked questions related to training, etc. These new links
appear under the "Topics for Term Project" category in the Extra Handouts section.
- (10/19)
A new category titled
"Dynamic Programming and Markov Processes" has been added in the Extra
Handouts section. It
containds several PDF files covering material on Dynamic programming,
Markov Chains, and we will be using all of them for our subsequent
lectures.
- (09/22) Homework 5 has been
available for download in the Homework
section. It is a team assignment that requires a 5-7 page report as the
main deliverable; the template to be used for your report is available
for download here. A
well-written report submitted in Spring 2004 is provided as a sample
for your reference and can be downloaded
here. As regards the team assignments, I will announce them latest
by Friday afternoon.
- (09/22)
Homework 4 has been made
available for download in the Homework
section. It is due at start of class on September 29, 2004 at 7:20 pm.
- (09/21) A new category titled "Topics for the Term
Project" has been added in the Extra Handouts section. I have provided a template
that you will be using for presenting your final report, some sample
reports that students have submitted in the past, and also links to
several papers from which you can derive useful ideas for your final
term project.
- (09/15) Exam 1 has been scheduled
for October 6, 2004. It will be an in-class exam, for about 65 minutes
of duration. I will send a detailed announcement later this week.
- (09/15) Homework 3 has been made
available for download in
the Homework section. It is
due at
start of class on September 22, 2004 at 7:20 pm.
- (09/08) Homework 2 has been made available for download in
the Homework section. It is
due at
start of class on September 15, 2004 at 7:20 pm.
- (09/01)
Homework 1 has been made available for download in the Homework section. It is due at
start of class on September 8, 2004 at 7:20 pm.
- (08/30)
The course web-page has been
uploaded and several papers
have been made available for download in the Extra Handouts section. I hope you
will enjoy this
course, and I look forward to working with you. The primer
on Petri nets will be required reading for the first and second
lectures.