Academics / Courses / DescriptionsCOMP_SCI 496: Qualitative Reasoning Seminar
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Prerequisites
Permission of instructor. This course is open to graduate students in cognitive science who are interested in knowledge representation. No programming will be required.Description
How people reason and learn about the continuous world is one of the central problems in cognitive
science. It is key to understanding how commonsense reasoning works about the physical and social
world. This seminar will explore ideas from qualitative reasoning, which provides representations that
support human-like reasoning and learning.
REQUIRED TEXTBOOK: Qualitative Representations: How People Reason and Learn about the Continuous World, by Ken Forbus, MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262038942.
DETAILED COURSE TOPICS: Students will be reading and discussing ideas about qualitative representations, including thinking through how to apply them in their own research or projects of interest to them. One page reaction papers will be required before each class session, and classes will involve a combination of discussion and hands-on representation exercises. A term project will enable students to explore these ideas in more depth.
COURSE COORDINATOR: Prof. Ken Forbus
COURSE INSTRUCTOR : Prof. Forbus