Arrangements 

This seminar, which is part of the major studies in Theoretical Computer Science, deals with annually varying topics of current interest in the field.  The topic of the Spring 2009 instantiation of the seminar is constraint programming.

Constraint programming is an effective approach to solving for combinatorial search problems which is based on techniques from artificial intelligence, computer science, databases, programming languages, and operations research. It is currently applied successfully to many domains such as scheduling, planning, routing, configuration, networks, and bioinformatics. 

The seminar presentations are based on the book

Handbook of Constraint Programming. P. Rossi, P. Van Beek, and T. Walsh (Eds.). Elsevier, 2006. Table of contents. 

In order to pass the course the students should give a seminar talk with
archivables slides (preferably in PDF) and provide feedback for three
other presentations.

The seminars are held on Wednesdays 12:15-14:00 in B353 and the course
starts on Wed Jan 20 when the seminar assignments are handed out.
Responsible teacher: Prof. Ilkka Niemelä

For the web pages of the course in Spring 2008 see T-79.4001 Spring 2008.

Grading

The initial course grade is determined by the grade of the seminar talk (85 %) and the grades of the three feedback reports (5% each).

You can increase your initial grade (if between 1-4) by one by writing a solid 2 page essay on ``What makes a good technical presentation'' based on your own experience as a speaker and a reviewer and on the  material in the course home pages.

The deadline for the essay is Wed April 22, 2009 (23:59) and it can be returned by email in PDF to Ilkka.Niemela@tkk.fi.

Course Feedback

We welcome course feedback which is collected  centrally in English and in Finnish.

The questionnaire is open until May 25, 2009. It takes a few minutes to fill in the form.