CSE 335/435 - Intelligent Decision Support Systems

Fall 2006

When and where  Mon, Wed, & Fri. 9:10- 10:00, Lewis Lab 316
Instructor  Héctor Muñoz-Avila, munoz@cse.lehigh.edu
Instructor's office hours  Mon,  4:00PM-5:00PM, Room  252 Packard Lab 

Announcements

** Details of the programing project here. Test files: case base and facts. Final update made on: October 17/2006

** Details of design project here.

Book

Experience Management: Foundations, Development Methodology, and Internet-Based Applications, Ralph Bergmann

Note:Available online for Lehigh's students through Lehigh's library. Go to http://springerlink.metapress.com/ (from a compuetr at Lehigh).

Additional source: Case-Based Reasoning Technology: From Foundations to Applications, Mario Lenz, Brigitte Bartsch-Spörl, Hans-Dieter Burkhard,  Stefan Wess (Eds.)

Description

In this course we will study advanced techniques and applications for intelligent decision support systems (IDSSs). The course will be self-contained and as part of it we'll study some of the AI techniques that are used to build IDSSs including:

  • Case-based Reasoning
  • Decision Trees
  • Knowledge representation

    We will also study several application areas of these techniques including:

  • Help-desk systems
  • e-commerce
  • Knowledge Management

    Example of a Commercial Intelligent Decision Support System

    One of the most succesful application areas for IDSSs are help-desk systems. Hundreds such systems have been deployed on-line worldwide, saving companies thousands of dollars by reducing dramatically the number of 1-800 calls to the customer support service.

    An example of such a system is Lucas Art's Yoda Help Desk System. Lucas Arts produces computer games based on the Star Wars movie series. If users experience problems installing or running the games, they'll access the Yoda Help Desk System to get on-line help.

    If you try the Yoda Help Desk System, you'll see that the system is asking details about your software to pinpoint the problem. This system uses an AI technique called conversational case-based reasoning, which we will cover in the course.

    Communication

    All announcements, handouts, etc. will be posted in this web site:
    www.cse.lehigh.edu/~munoz/CSE335

    Topics Covered So Far

    Student's Work

    The following activities will be performed by the students taking this course:

  • Class participation and articles reading. From time to time I will hand out some homework assignments following on discussions in class and/or from reading material. CSE 435 students will have extra assignments of theoretical nature.

  • Programming project. We will implement an intelligent decision support system. Although Java is preferred, students can choose any programming language they like. The only real requirement is that the implementation runs in one of the computers in the Packard building.

  • Oral presentation. One or more papers will be assigned well in advance to each student for a presentation in class. (CSE 435)

  • Final exam. There will be a final exam of topics covered in the course

  • Design project. The students will write a document describing the functionality of an intelligent support component on an existing software of their choice. As a case example of what should be in this paper, we'll study the following paper in class:

  • Muñoz-Avila, H., Gupta, K., Aha, D.W., Nau, D.S. (2001) Knowledge Based Project Planning Chapter of Knowledge Management and Organizational Memories 

    which describes how an intelligent support component can be built on top of a project planning tool such as Microsoft Project.


    Last update: Fri Sep 1 18:09:34 EST 2006