Schedule:	Monday 3:20-6:20pm, Psych A139 (RuCCS Playroom)
Professor:	Doug DeCarlo
Office hours:	Wednesday 1:30-3:00pm, CBIM 20 (or send email)
Sakai site:	https://sakai.rutgers.edu/portal/site/compmodel10

Synopsis

Computational models are executable explanations of complex phenomena. In this course, we will build and debug computational models that implement theories of perception, action, behavior and visual appearance. We will explore computational techniques that use models to guess (estimate) the current state of the world given observations of it. And we will review methods to assess and evaluate these models.

Requirements

The requirements of this course are:

• active participation in classes and the discussion list;
• regular homeworks that involve reading, writing, and programming (the programming can often be done in pairs);
• three group projects, and their presentation and critique, completed in varying groups of 3 to 5 students.

Readings for the class will be made available here - there is no textbook.

The central place of skills development in the class means that typical students will not be well served by attending as if they were auditors.

Audience

This course is for students both in and outside of computer science who want to collaborate on interdisciplinary research. It requires the ability to talk and think computationally about programs, data, processes, abstraction, and proofs, such as taught and exercised in the course Computational Thinking (16:198:503). While the course will not count towards graduate requirements in computer science (other than the graduate school's general requirement that PhD students take 48 credits of coursework), students who complete it will be ready for Rutgers's advanced graduate courses in artificial intelligence. Computer science students with interdisciplinary interests are very welcome in the class, as they are likely to benefit from our reflections on talk and teamwork in computer science.

Lectures are on the schedule wiki (on sakai).