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Declarative Methods
Prof. Jason Eisner
Course # 601.432/632 - Spring 2026
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Announcements
- 4/29/26 Final exam is Tue 5/5 from
9am-noon in the classroom. Review materials have been posted on Piazza.
- 3/27/26 Homework
4 is ready for you. Due on
Fri 4/10 Mon 4/13 at 2pm.
- 3/2/26 Homework
3 is ready for you. Due on Mon 3/23 at 2pm (right after spring break).
- 2/16/26 Homework
2 is ready for you. Due on Mon 3/2 at 2pm. Start now!
- 2/2/26 Homework 1 is ready for you. Due on Mon 2/16 at 2pm. Start now—it's long!
- 1/19/26 Welcome! Class starts
Wednesday 1/21, 3-4pm, in Hodson 213.
Key Links
Schedule
Format: A typical unit will last two
weeks. The first week will cover a particular declarative language.
The second week will look at strategies used by modern solvers for
that language. Your homework (assigned at the end of the first week)
will ask you to program in the language, using specific solver
software.
Warning: The schedule may change. Future
lectures (and homeworks) may also change, especially for topics
later in the course.
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Week 1: Introduction (Jan 20, 22, 26)
- Lectures: intro,
little languages,
formal languages
- What is this course about?
- A broad view of computer languages, including "little languages."
- Some examples of declarative languages.
- How could you build a new language?
- A review of formal languages and reductions.
- Readings
- Resources
Weeks 2-3: Satisfiability (Jan 28, 30, Feb 2; Feb 4, 6, 9)
- Lectures
- Homework 1
(assigned 2/2, due 2/16)
- Solving logic puzzles
- Constructing dense crossword puzzles
- Readings
- Resources
Weeks 4-5: Constraint Programming (Feb 11, 13, 16; Feb 18, 20, 23)
- Lectures
- Homework 2
(assigned 2/16, due 3/2)
- Readings
- Resources
Project proposals due on Feb 27
Weeks 6-7: Logic Programming (Feb 25, 27, Mar 2; Mar 4, 6, 9)
- Lectures
- Homework 3
(assigned 3/2, due 3/23)
- Readings
- Resources
- SWI Prolog (the most
popular open-source Prolog, if you want to use something
other than ECLiPSe)
- Prolog Programming in Depth, an online book by Michael A. Covington, Donald Nute, and Andr� Vellino
- The Art of Prolog, by Richard O'Keefe, and its sequel, The Craft of Prolog
- Prolog
and Natural Language Analysis (online edition), by Fernando
Pereira and Stuart Shieber—for NLP fans and the NLP-curious,
a classic published in 1987 just before the statistical revolution hit NLP
Midterm Exam (Mar 11)
Catch-Up or Get-Ahead Day (Mar 13)
Spring Break (Mar 14-22)
Weeks 8-9: Mathematical Programming (Mar 23, 25, 27; Mar 30, Apr 1, 3)
- Lectures
- Homework 4
(assigned 3/27, due
4/10 4/13)
- Readings
- Resources
Weeks 10-11: Dynamic Programming (Apr 6, 8, 10; Apr 13, 15, 17)
- Lectures
- Homework 5
(assigned 4/10, due 4/20)
- Readings
- Resources
Week 12: Formalizing Mathematics and Computation (Apr 20, 22, 24, 27)
Term Project
Final Exam (Tue, May 5, 9am-noon)
Recitation Materials
Old Materials
Here are some materials that we covered in past years but
will probably omit this year.
Soft Constraints
(In probabilistic modeling frameworks like Markov Random Fields and probabilistic programming languages,
fundamental problems like Most Probable Explanation correspond to weighted MAX-SAT, while fundamental
problems like marginal inference and partition function computation correspond to #SAT. Similar techniques
are often employed: systematic and stochastic search, propagation, LP relaxation, etc.)
Satisfiability Modulo Theories
(Ken Roe gave a guest lecture on this topic in 2013.)
Linear Classifiers
(This topic is now covered well in 601.475/675 Machine Learning and elsewhere.)
