TITLE: Debunking the tyranny of the early mistakes myth

PRESENTER: Prof. Bill Havens, http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~havens/, havens@cs.sfu.ca

AFFILIATION:Simon Fraser University and Actenum Corp., http://www.cs.sfu.ca/

DATE: Friday 2nd March 2007

TIME: 13:00:00

PLACE: CSE Seminar Room, Level 1, K17

ABSTRACT:

Branching heuristics in search procedures like SAT solvers are
often justified in terms of fail first -- branch on the variable
most likely to cause a mistake. However, branching mistakes at
the top of the search tree can be very costly to undo -- we have
to explore half the tree before we backtrack and undo the
first decision. Search procedures like limited discrepancy
search have been designed to exploit this fact. In this talk,
I look in detail at these issues.

BIOGRAPHY OF SPEAKER:

Bill Havens is Associate Professor and Director of Intelligent
Systems Lab at School of Computing Science, Simon Fraser University.
Bill Havens is also Chief Scientist at Actenum. Bill’s interests
lie in the practical application of intelligent systems technology
to real-world, industrial-scale situations.

Bill is well known internationally for his work in the fields of
Constraint Reasoning and Artificial Intelligence, and has directed
various projects aimed at advancing research and applications of
intelligent systems methods and technology.

Bill holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of BC
as well as MSEE and BSEE degrees from Virginia Tech.

Seminar information is also available at
http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/db/ai/seminars/list/index.html

Host:

Toby Walsh

Seminar Convenor:

Van Hai Ho