Transfer Learning Reading Group

	Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence (RLAI)
	Transfer Learning Reading Group

Some members of the RLAI group at the University of Alberta will be meeting weekly to discuss papers in the field of Transfer Learning. The goal of these weekly discussions will be to increase members' knowledge of current research in Transfer Learning and to generate ideas for future research in Transfer Learning from a Reinforcement Learning perspective. The papers selected will not, however, be restricted to those written by members of the RL community. The leaping-off point for this group will be the Inductive Transfer: 10 Years Later workshop from NIPS 2005. The inaugural meeting will involve discussion of Rich Caruana's slides from the workshop as well as some preliminary organization.

Organisation and Guidelines

These web pages are "self-organising"
Meeting dates and times, along with the paper to be discussed, should be posted on this page no less than one week in advance
Meetings will take place in CSC 349
Members of the meeting group should feel free to select papers for unassigned weeks by editing the table below
For the moment, meetings will be very informal. If it is decided that discussion would be improved by a discussion leader, assignment of leaders will also occur on this page
If you select a paper, please provide a link to the paper in the table
Editing open pages such as this is easy but requires Netscape or Mozilla or this Python script (instructions here). You really should learn how to do this, but don't let it slow down getting your information in here. If you don't know how to edit yet, then send your information by email to someone who can put it in, such as Brad
Please arrive at meetings on time
Please read the paper to be discussed before the meeting and bring whatever notes you feel may aid discussion

Date	Time	Paper	Link
Thursday, September 21, 2006	11 AM	Organizational, Caruana's Slides	PPT
Thursday, September 28, 2006	11 AM	Transfer of Learning in Animals. Jim Kehoe	see below
Thursday, October 5, 2006 Thursday, October 12, 2006	11 AM	"Multitask learning: A knowledge-based source of inductive bias." Caruana 1993	PDF
Thursday, October 19, 2006	11 AM	"Exploiting Task Relatedness for Multiple Task Learning." Ben-David & Shuller 2003	PDF
Thursday, October 26, 2006	4 PM	"Theoretical Models of Learning to Learn." Baxter 1997 (up to and including 3.1)	PDF
Thursday, November 9, 2006	4 PM	"Theoretical Models of Learning to Learn." Baxter 1997 (the rest)	PDF
Thursday, November 16, 2006	4 PM	"Exploiting Task Relatedness for Multiple Task Learning." Ben-David & Shuller 2003	PDF
Thursday, November 23, 2006	4 PM	"CHILD: A First Step Towards Continual Learning." Mark Ring 1997	PDF

Does "you should read the paper beforehand" count the slides for the first meeting? Anna, Mon Sep 18 16:38:10 2006

Please at least browse the slides before the meeting. There are quite a few undefined TLAs and mysterious graphs, but the slides will at least give us a starting point for discussions. Brad, Mon Sep 18 16:46:53 2006

Would you please let us know when your reserved the place for the next meeting? Alborz, Mon Sep 18 17:27:30 2006

Done and done. Brad Joyce, Mon Sep 18 17:41:24 2006

As agreed, I will be give a 50-min talk on the basics of transfer of learning in animals. For readings, go to my website /RLAI/kehoe.html Click on publications and open:

Under "Book Chapters and Conference Proceedings"

21. Kehoe, E. J. & Macrae, M. (2002). Fundamental behavioral methods and findings in classical conditioning. In J. W. Moore (Ed.), Classical Conditioning: A Guidebook for Neuroscientists (pp. 171-231). New York: Springer.

Read pp. 171-173, 182-188

Under "Journal Articles"

27. Kehoe, E. J. (1988). A layered network model of associative learning:Learning-to-learn and configuration. Psychological Review, 95, 411-433.

Read pp. 411-419

Cheers,
Jim j.kehoe@unsw.edu.au, Fri Sep 22 17:31:54 2006

j.kehoe@unsw.edu.au, Fri Sep 22 17:31:54 2006

Just a reminder that the Transfer Learning Reading Group is once again meeting Thursday, October 12 at 11 AM. Due to the less-than-stellar turnout last week, we will be discussing the same paper this week. Brad, Wed Oct 11 14:47:37 2006

The paper this week is a bit of theory which tries to formalize the idea of task-relatedness. I expect the discussion to be lively. Brad, Mon Oct 16 14:23:18 2006

Proposed time for reading group this week: 1pm Thursday.

This is to avoid overlap with our very own David Silver's games group presentation. anna Koop, Mon Nov 20 14:42:47 2006

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