A conversation with Prof. Luger

This afternoon, I had a conversation with Prof. Luger. I've read his book about Artificial Intelligence, and think he should be a guru in this field. Unfortunately, I took about 15 minutes to look for his office. But when I open the door, I saw a kindly old man standing in front of me, smiling and asking, "You're looking for me?". I'm sure, he's Prof. Luger.

Sitting in his office, I saw many kinds of AI games. I knew them from graphs, textbooks and computer programs, but today I saw the real ones! So I asked Luger about the Eight-Puzzle Game. I implemented a program using the Heuristic Algorithm to find resolution of it. Nevertheless, there were a lot of initial states which could not lead to any solution. I thought there must be some mistakes in my code. But Luger said that mine was OK. There were 50% of initial states that had no solution. The state space of the Eight-Puzzle was right divided into 2 independent trees. One could lead to a certain resolution, while the other could not.

Besides, Luger asked about my opinion about UNM. Knowing that I endeavored to set up a community about AI in my undergraduate university, he said that I was lucky because there were many professors here focusing on AI, like Machine Learning, Probabilistic Reasoning, Genetic Programming, etc. He also suggested me to talk with other related professors. Anyway, he added me as a member of his Loopy Group, and I would attend the first seminar this Friday.

My academic study in UNM is going to be started. How I wish I could step into the field of AI and achieve my final goal. Fighting!

The Orientation of DCS

Yesterday, I attended the Department's Orientation. There were about 30 new graduate students, half domestic and half international. During the orientation, faculty and senior graduate students were talking so fast that none of us could catch them. I am a little afraid that if they talk like this in the class then I'll have to record their words.

However, the food was a bit terrible. And Darko kept talking about his molecule programming beside me. So I escaped and went to BSU to see my friends. An additional thing I want to talk about is that when the orientation was ended, a senior graduate student came and talked with us 4 Chinese new students. Then he just wrote down the telephone numbers of 2 girls. At night, When Zhan talked about tomorrow's moving home, she told me that the senior student had sent her a inviting text to their free dinner. Wow, he was so fast to chase a girl. What a guy!

Life Begins

This is my second blog on BlogSpot. The first one was established while I was applying for U.S. Graduate Schools. Now, I'm in the United States. My new campaign begins. So it is time to start a new blog to record all my successes and failures.

At Albuquerque, one of the biggest cities of America, I may make many international and domestic friends. And I can also fall into the black hole of sadness and frustration. C'est la vie! But life is still going on. So I can not stop my feet.

I come here with no financial aid, no friend, no academic reputation and no professional success. What I have is just my dream, belief and young heart. Every night, when I pray to Confucius, I can feel his existence, and his focus on me. He said that a noble should not care where he stays but what kind of person he is. Though thousands of miles away from my motherland, I'll still try hard to be hard-working, frank and kind.

I should first change myself before I change the current situation of my nation!

Come on! Just do it!