AI Class 2, Probably

(I realized my numbering scheme for these posts is bad, so I'm going to use AI Class N, where N is the week.)

Anyway... Week 2 and counting with 10% of the class under my belt.

I missed one question on the first homework -- after receiving actual clarifications-from-on-high vis the ambiguities, some of which were significantly different from the assumptions I was making. What I missed is the idea that, for an environment to be "Completely Observable" requires that the agent use no memory of previous states. Which, IMHO, is a little strange, since it was pointed out that chess and checkers need one bit of memory to determine who's turn it is next...But there's no point in arguing with two-dimensional-video-professors, so I guess I will Just Let It Go.

Now well into Week 2: Probability: Our two new video-Lessons were posted a day late due to crashes in the homework system from the previous week AND after three mostly full time days I'm still only half finished. So I am calculating the priority of my posterior, i.e.: it is kicking my asp. I suspect that my chance of completing the class is 1/N as weeks progress. Fortunately it seems that the homework only requires the absorption of the first of the two Lessons, and that only one of the six questions requires the full-press-calculations that the prof -- Sebastian Thrun -- so gleefully dragged us all through. Repeatedly.

As per established process the first Lesson was a (long) set of short videos each explaining a concept, followed by a quick quiz question. And in keeping with tradition, most of the quizzes were used to introduce the next section rather than reviewing and using what was covered in the current one. Sometimes a quiz introduced new notation and concepts with no explanation. I finally realized that entering random answers would move things along so I could get to the point. Occasionally a question could be answered by grinding through the material at hand, so that does make the occasional correct answer a thrilling Thank God! moment.

We now return to our original programming: Unit 4 -- Probabilistic Inference. Oy.