Home | Answer set solving in practice

Our course “Answer set solving in practice” is usually held as a graduate course at the University of Potsdam but obvious circumstances made us produce an online version.

The teaching material follows our book on Answer Set Solving in Practice. The raw material of the course, like LaTeX sources, can be found in a github repository. The accompanying videos are provided through Potassco’s youtube channel and our university’s media server. All underlying ASP systems are available in open source at potassco.org and installable either from source or various package managers. Our native site also contains many other resources around ASP, such as documentation, tutorials, support and much more.

The schedule of the course follows roughly the material presented below and consists (usually) of two hours of lecture, two hours of exercises, both per week, along with a tutorial, and three practical assignments. We teach this usually in a format resembling a Y. We start with lectures and exercises up to the Language part. Then, we start a second branch with a tutorial on using ASP systems, which enables the students to accomplish the three practical assignments. (The first assignment is usually on modeling a Sudoku puzzle since it nicely relates to the n-Queens puzzle treated in the part on Modeling.) Lecture and exercises continue in parallel exploring foundations, algorithms, and implementation of ASP systems.

Meanwhile, we started our follow-up course dealing with advanced encoding and solving technology. The transition is marked with the Encoding part that constitutes both the finale of the basic and the kick-off of the advanced course.

Take care, this page will grow and evolve over time. So stay tuned and drop us an email for any comments!