Email:
Phone:
(847) 491-7279
Office:
Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center
2133 Sheridan Rd
Evanston, IL 60208
Calendar:
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Email: | |
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Phone: |
(847) 491-7279 | |
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Room 3.315 Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center 2133 Sheridan Rd Evanston, IL 60208 | |
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Calendar: | http://calendar.yahoo.com/criesbeck |
Chris Riesbeck is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Northwestern University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1974. His dissertation was on natural language understanding.
He has done research on case-based reasoning, memory-based language understanding, and intelligent interfaces for knowledge acquistion and teaching. His current research is concerned with making interactive learning environments as easy to author as textbooks.
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An example of this work is the Indie Tool. |
Professor Riesbeck has been a visiting scholar at the Institute for the Study of Semantics and Cognition in Switzerland and at the Center for Human Information Processing at the University of California in San Diego, and was a research scientist in computer science at Yale University for 15 years.
His publications include Artificial Intelligence Programming, Inside Case-Based Reasoning, Inside Computer Understanding and Inside Case-Based Explanation.
I spend (far too much) time developing computer science course material, the results of which appear below.
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Introduction to Programming |
Over the course of the quarter, students create an interactive cross-platform animation of their own design, while learning all the basic concepts of programming and modular software construction. | |
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Data Structures |
Exercises, many from a complex project, motivate the use, analysis, and design of data structures; currently using C++'s Standard Template Library, and CS C25-style email and critique format. | |
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Artificial Intelligence Programming |
Each student independently learns/improves Lisp skills with exercises that are emailed, critiqued (not graded) and redone, in parallel with a knowledge-based AI project that motivates lectures and class-wide assignments. | |
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Software Engineering |
Emphasis on applying the three things students never do in school (testing, requirements, and project estimation) to projects they thought they did right in previous courses. | |
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Component Development |
Technologies and design patterns relevant to developing frameworks for reusable software components. |
Google "define:artificial intelligence" or visit AAAI's site, and you'll see lots of definitions, mostly oriented around the notion of computers doing things that require intelligence.
These definitions are clearly inadequate. For one thing, there are tasks that we think require intelligence when humans do them, that are not AI tasks, e.g., calculating complex sums. Conversely, there are tasks we don't think require intelligence when humans do them, that are AI tasks, e.g., computer vision. And, of course, as has been pointed out for decades, there are tasks that were AI only until we figured out how to get a computer to do them, e.g., optical character recognition.
So here's the true definition of AI, the one that gets at the heart of what we do and why.
Artificial Intelligence is the search for the answer to the fundamental question: Why are computers so stupid?
It's left as an exercise for the intelligent reader as to why this definition addresses the three weaknesses listed above.
The AI and Learning Sciences groups at Yale and Northwestern take the terms "thesis" and "defense" pretty seriously. I wrote What is a Thesis Defense? many years ago for the AI grad students at Yale. I've updated it a bit to relate it to the Learning Sciences. It's a personal statement.
Every year for more years than I plan to reveal, I've written a programming question for our 2nd year PhD qualifying exam. They used to require answers in Lisp, but in the past few years, anything suitable is allowed.
Just one at the moment:
As the Weekly World News would say, "Elvis is alive and teaching computer science!" Proof!
Even when it makes me wince, Babylon 5 remains the most interesting science fiction show ever made. It also seems to inspire web-site developers. Here are just a few good sites:
My personal collection of mathematician-physicist-engineer jokes. Similar collections can be found here and here. (If you want a lot of just engineer jokes, try here.)
From rec.humor.funny,the Reader's Digest for net-humor:
Send mail to
Chris Riesbeck.
