CS 420-1: Undergraduate Simulation, Modeling and Analysis: Research Seminar

Spring 2000 information:
- Time/Place: 4.30-5.50 Mondays and Wednesdays, 020 MS-Hall.
- Instructors: Profs. Simha, Park, Leemis, Trosset, Zhang. More info.
Catalog description:
- Title: CS 420-1: UMSA Research Seminar, 3 credits, Spring.
- Prerequisite: Junior or senior status, a programming course (e.g. CS 141), and some background in modeling (e.g., CS 426, CS 449) and permission of instructor.
- Description: This is a research-oriented course taught jointly by several faculty affiliated with the Computational Science Cluster in the departments of computer science, physics, applied science and mathematics. Students will investigate an interdisciplinary computational science research topic in detail and also study related research papers from the literature. Each student will be mentored in their research by a participating faculty member. While this course is primarily aimed at students participating in UMSA (Undergraduate Modeling, Simulation and Analysis), an NSF funded 3-course research sequence described at the URL http://www.cs.wm.edu/~simha/umsa/, any student with the appropriate background is welcome. See the UMSA URL for additional information, or send email to park@cs.wm.edu, simha@cs.wm.edu, leemis@math.wm.edu or shiwei@as.wm.edu.
Text: Growing Artificial Societies. J.M. Epstein and R. Axtell. MIT Press, 1996. ISBN 0-262-55025-3.

Lecture schedule:


  Mondays: Lecture, 4.30-6.00 pm, 020 MS-Hall
  Wednesday: Discussion, student paper presentation, 4.30-5.30 pm, 020 MS-Hall


          Monday topic     MON   WED    Wednesday topic (W&M students)
                                        [Presenter, discussants]
  -----------------------------------------------------------------------
                                  19    Intro class - W&M

  Simha   Introduction      24    26    How to give a presentation 
                                        [Simha]
                            ---------   

  Park    A-life 1          31     2    How to read (and write) a paper 
                                        [Park]

  Zhang   Monte-Carlo        7     9    Reliability 1
                                        [Leemis]

  [External Speaker]        14    16    Carnahan
                                        [P1, L1, D11, D12, D13]

  Trosset Estimation        21    23    Arnold
                                        [P2, L2, D21, D22, D23]
                            ---------

  Park    A-life 2          28     1    Siefert
                                        [P3, L3, D31, D32, D33]

  SPRING BREAK               6     8    

  Simha   Annealing         13    15    Barnes
                                        [P4, L4, D41, D42, D43]

  Trosset Optimization      20    22    Sibre
                                        [P5, L5, D51, D52, D53]

  Leemis  Reliability 2     27    29    Mallozzi
                                        [P6, L6, D61, D62, D63]
                            ---------

  Zhang   Stat.Phys.         3     5    Goger
                                        [P7, L7, D71, D72, D73]

  Lawson  A-life 3          10    12    Montealegre
                                        [P8, L8, D81, D82, D83]

  Simha   Microeconomics    17    19    Tahan
                                        [P9, L9, D91, D92, D93]

  Student presentations     24    26


  The cryptic labels P7, L3 etc are explained below.

Coursework and grading Each student will be expected to:
- [10 points] Attend Monday and Wednesday class sessions.
- [10 points] Complete assigned homeworks.
- [10 points] Make a paper presentation on a Wednesday.
- [5 points] Lead a discussion of a Wednesday presentation.
- [5 points] Participate in three Wednesday discussions.
- [40 points] Select an advisor from among the four instructors, select a project from a list provided by the advisor, work on it and write up the results in a report.
- [20 points] Present results from the project in a conference to be arranged for the class at the end of the semester.
Typically, Monday lecture sessions will be followed by a homework and a follow-up Wednesday discussion session. Some of these Wednesday sessions are not related to the corresponding Wednesday and have been reserved by faculty for special purposes. Each student will select a Wednesday session in which to present a paper. The Wednesday sessions involving student presentations will feature a student presentation of a paper (to be assigned by faculty) and a student-led discussion of the paper following the presentation. Each student will be required to:
- pick a Wednesday session in which to make a presentation. Thus, you should select a P-number among P1-P9 (such as, for example, P3).
- pick a Wednesday different from the selected above in which to be the lead discussant. Thus, select a L-number different from the P-number selected above (such as L4).
- pick three different Wednesdays, also different from the ones selected above, to be a discussion participant. Thus, select three different D-numbers, on Wednesdays you haven't selected before in this procedure (such as D11, D71, D83 in our running example).
A student making a presentation should take about 30-40 minutes, following which the lead discussant and others will discuss the paper. All students are welcome to participate in the discussion.
Reference material (on reserve in Swem library)
This list will be updated periodically.
- Books:
  - S. Levy. Artificial Life. Vintage Books, 1992. (On reserve)
  - D.E. Goldberg. Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization and Learning. Addison-Wesley, 1989. (On reserve)
  - E. Aarts and J. Korst. Simulation Annealing and Boltzmann Machines. Wiley, 1989. (On reserve)
  - W. Poundstone. The Recursive Universe. Contemporary Books, 1985.
- Papers: (To be announced)
Note: If you have a disability that may effect your participation in this course and wish to discuss academic acommodations, please contact me as soon as possible