CMSC 477/677 - Spring 2005

Discussion Questions for Class #6, February 17

Reading: Soar website (overview); Lehman et al., "A Gentle Introduction to Soar."

Reading suggestions:  This is a fairly long paper.  Some parts are more important than others.  Start by skimming the whole paper (this should take no more than 2-5 minutes), and deciding which sections seem important.    My comments on importance:  Introductions are always important.  For this class, sections 2 and 3, which motivate the "big ideas," are critical since they put the work in context.  Section 4 introduces the key notion of problem spaces, and is worth spending some time understanding, if it isn't clear on first reading.  Sections 5 through 8 give the details, and lots of examples.  You should dip into these sections, sampling to get a good sense of what's going on, but without getting hung up on undertanding any one particular example or idea.  Sections 9, 10, and 11 are very important because they analyze the ideas presented in the paper, and will help you relate this paper to ACT-R, and to architectures we have yet to study.  Section 12 is probably only relevant if you're going to do your Agents project on Soar.  Section 13 has some good ideas for discussion questions!

Note that I'm not saying "technical details don't matter," but it's certainly more important to understand why Soar works the way it does, and what the designers were trying to accomplish, than to understand the arcane details of how contexts are used to trigger associations in Soar's elaboration phase.

 

Soar Concepts

Soar as an Architecture

Soar vs. ACT-R