Meeting Agenda
Wednesday, July 24th, 1996
- Location:
- DC 1304
- Time:
- 1:30 PM
- Chair:
- Pete Harwood
1. Adoption of the Agenda - additions or deletions
2. Coffee Hour
- Coffee hour this week:
- Any volunteers?
-
- Coffee hour next week:
- Any volunteers?
3. Next meeting
- Date:
- July 31, 1996
- Location:
- DC 1304
- Time:
- 1:30 PM
- Chair:
- Fabrice Jaubert
- Technical presentation:
- Saar Friedman
4. Forthcoming
- Chairs:
-
- Ryan Gunther
- Gilles Khouzam
- Rick Knowles
- John Kominek
- Tech Presenters:
-
- Ryan Gunther
- Peter Harwood
- Fabrice Jaubert (possibly)
- Rick Kazman
5. Technical Presentation
- Presenter:
- Ed Dengler
- Title: TBA
-
- Abstract:
-
6. General Discussion Items
- Anne:
- Fabrice's wake, potential date: Sunday August 18th.
7. Action List
- University of Toronto visit, potential date: October 5th.
8. Director's Meeting
9. Seminars
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES
COMPUTER SCIENCE SEMINAR
-Thursday, July 25, 1996
Prof. James H. Kane, Director, Center for the
Advancement of Instruction in Science and Engineering
(CAISE), Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York, will
speak on ``Intelligent Learning Environments (ILEs) in
Engineering and Science Higher Education''.
TIME: 2:00-3:00 p.m.
ROOM: DC 1304
ABSTRACT
Background:
This seminar is part of a major initiative at Clarkson University to
develop effective systems to help engineering and science students and
technical professionals in industry learn complex concepts by applying
latest software technologies including multimedia techniques and
symbolic mathematical computation. The initiative is the result of
support from industrial partners including General Motors, EDS, United
Technologies, and Waterloo Maple.
Abstract
An Intelligent Learning Environment (ILE) is a characterization chosen
for a particular set of capabilities that, in aggregate, can
significantly enhance the learning process. An ILE is a completely
immersive system that is "aware" of the discipline being studied. The
facilitative and intelligent nature of ILEs provides learners with the
a significant fundamental benefit - the ability to examine all details
associated with the solution of correctly solved pertinent problems on
an "on-demand" basis. While this top level definition might seem to
some like science fiction, prototypes of such ILEs are indeed under
development and demonstrable today. In this presentation, the
fundamental nature and benefits of ILEs are discussed. These ideas
are made tangible in the form of specific examples from prototype ILEs
in engineering mechanics.
Presented by:
Symbolic Computation Group, University of Waterloo
Engineering Education Research Centre, University of Waterloo
Waterloo Maple Inc.
For additional information, contact
Dr. Tom Lee
Waterloo Maple Inc.
tlee@maplesoft.com
747-2373
Web pages, search engines, and emotional closure
by
Prabhakar Ragde
Abstract
This talk will be a tour through the social effects of computer-mediated
communication, illustrated with examples from my own past. It starts with
e-mail on a single, isolated machine, and concludes with Web homepages and
reactions to a personal memoir I buried deep on mine
http://plg.uwaterloo.ca/~plragde.
About the Speaker
Prabhakar Ragde is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer
Science at UW.
Thursday, July 25, 1996
3:30 pm
DC 1302
Tea and doughnaughts will be served.
All are welcome.
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A Student Chapter of the ACM
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES
MASTER'S THESIS PRESENTATION
-Monday, July 29, 1996
Stephanie Ellis, graduate student, Dept. Comp. Sci.,
Univ. Waterloo, will speak on ``WatSched: A Combined
Approach to Intelligent Scheduling.''
TIME: 3:00-4:00 p.m.
ROOM: DC 1331
ABSTRACT
Scheduling can be viewed as the art of timetabling, the
process of selecting among alternative sequences of
actions and appropriately allocating constrained
resources. A ubiquitous problem presenting itself in
areas ranging from broadcasting to aircraft repair,
scheduling has intrigued and continues to intrigue
researchers in both the Artificial Intelligence (AI)
and Operations Research (OR) communities.
This thesis concerns the design of WatSched, a computer
system prototype devised to partially automate the
course scheduling process for the Department of
Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. A
combined system, WatSched proposes to take advantage of
strengths of both AI and OR.
A comprehensive survey of respective techniques from
both fields, of the problem domain, and of the current
course scheduling practice, supported system design
decisions. The goal in WatSched is satisficing,
resulting in a acceptable schedule, and not necessarily
an optimal one. WatSched's approach is hierarchical:
the Transportation Method, an OR Linear Programming
technique, is used to produce a preliminary schedule,
which is then further massaged by an AI Partial
Constraint Satisfaction (PCSP) based local search. At
each phase of the scheduling process, only a subset of
the domain constraints is considered, making the
problem more manageable, and paralleling the current
course scheduling practice.
The main focus of the thesis is the timely delivery of
a good course schedule. The implemented AI and OR
techniques were tested on four data sets which differed
in cardinality and complexity. Empirical results
supported the choice of the Transportation Method as
the preliminary schedule generation technique.
AI and OR were compared in the first phase of the
scheduling process, but their approaches combined in
the overall WatSched design. The result is a flexible,
efficient and effective system.
Historically, AI and OR have evolved in parallel. This
thesis attempts to narrow the borders between the two
fields, suggesting collaborating rather than competing
technologies.
WatSched is a testimonial to the expression that "two
heads are better than one"!
The BeBox
by
David Evans
Abstract
In October 1995, Be introduced a new multiprocessing personal computer.
It features a new, modern operating system, efficient I/O-laden hardware,
and one of the most responsive, human companies ever to come out of Silicon
Valley. It has been called everything from the next Amiga to the next
NeXT to the machine that will save the world to a complete waste of time.
Come and see for yourself that usability, responsiveness, and performance
outweigh buzzwords and specifications.
About the Speaker
David Evans is a graduate student at UW. He received his Bachelors
degrees in Computing and Information Science, and in English at the
University of Guelph.
Wednesday, July 24, 1996
4:30 pm
MC 4040
Tea and doughnaughts will be served.
All are welcome.
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A Student Chapter of the ACM
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES
THEORY SEMINAR
-Wednesday, July 31, 1996
David Clark, graduate student, Dept. Comp. Sci., Univ.
Waterloo will speak on ``Tree Partitioning For
Secondary Storage''.
TIME: 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
ROOM: DC 1304
ABSTRACT
We consider the problem of arranging the nodes of a
tree on secondary storage with the goal of minimizing
either the average cost of a traversal from the root to
a leaf or the worst case cost of such a traversal. We
will discuss dynamic programming approaches by
Lukes(1974) and Gil and Itai(1993) to the average case
problem and a related algorithm for the worst case
problem. Next we discuss a simpler approach that
minimizes the worst case cost. Finally, we discuss the
problem of maintaining a partitioned tree under node
insertion and deletion operations. Most of the
discussion will centre on binary trees but the
algorithms generalize to trees of higher degree.
DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
UNIVERSITY OF WATERLOO
SEMINAR ACTIVITIES
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR
-Friday, July 26, 1996
Marzena Makuta, graduate student, Dept. Comp. Sci.,
University of Waterloo will speak on ``An Integrated
Approach to Evaluating Text Coherence and its
Application to the Prevention of Reader Misconceptions,
or The Joy of Detecting Incoherence in Texts''.
TIME: 2:30-3:30 p.m.
ROOM: DC 2305 LPAIG LAB
ABSTRACT
We examine the problem of incoherence in text and
propose an integrated framework for judging it.
Incoherence is one source of misconception during
natural language processing --- given a text which is
not sufficiently coherent, a listener may be unable to
interpret the intended meaning; moreover, the listener
may produce an interpretation which is not the the one
intended by the speaker. We show how the inclusion of
a coherence filter in various natural language
processing systems may be useful in flagging
problematic input so that misconceptions may be
deflected.
10. Lab Cleanup (until 2:30 or 5 minutes)