CS 420-2: Undergraduate Simulation, Modeling and Analysis:
Research Seminar
Spring 1998 information:
Time/Place: 3-4.20 Mondays, 020 MS-Hall.
Discussion hour: Mondays 5-6.
Instructors: Profs. Simha, Park, Leemis, Zhang.
Office Hours:
Simha
Tue: 3.30-5.30,
Wed 11-12, 5-6.30
Park
Mon, Wed: 11-12,
Tue: 10-12,
Thu: 10-11
Leemis
Tue, Thu 1:30-3:00
Zhang
Fri, 10:30-12, 1-2
Catalog description:
Title: CS 420-2: 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)
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.html, 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.
Coursework and grading
Each student will be expected to:
[20 points] Attend Monday class sessions.
[20 points] Complete assigned homeworks.
[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.
Reference material (on reserve in Swem library)
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.
(To be placed on reserve)
J.H. Holland. Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems.
MIT Press, 1995. (To be placed on reserve)
J.H. Holland. Hidden Order: How Adaption Builds Complexity.
Addison-Wesley, 1995. (To be placed on reserve)
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