Cardiff School of Computer Science and Informatics
Coursework Assessment Pro-forma
Module Code: CMT304
Module Title: Programming Paradigms
Assessment Title: Part 1: Logic Programming
Assessment Number: 1 of 3
Date Set: 1st November 2021
Submission date and Time: 2nd May 2022 at 09:30
Return Date: 30th May 2022
This assignment is worth 1/3 of the total marks available for this module. If coursework is
submitted late (and where there are no extenuating circumstances):
1. If the assessment is submitted no later than 24 hours after the deadline, the mark for
the assessment will be capped at the minimum pass mark;
2. If the assessment is submitted more than 24 hours after the deadline, a mark of 0 will
be given for the assessment.
Your submission must include the official Coursework Submission Cover sheet, which can
be found here:
https://docs.cs.cf.ac.uk/downloads/coursework/Coversheet.pdf
Submission Instructions
All submission must be via Learning Central. Upload the following files in a single zip file,
[student number].zip:
Description Type Name
Cover Sheet Compulsory One PDF (.pdf) file [student number].pdf
Task 1 Compulsory Four source files problem encoding.lp
problem instance1.lp
problem instance2.lp
problem instance3.lp
Task 2 Compulsory One PDF (.pdf) file task2.pdf
Any deviation from the submission instructions above (including the number and types of
files submitted) will lead to the marks being capped at 50%.
Staff reserve the right to invite students to a meeting to discuss coursework submissions.
1
Your submissions will be checked for plagiarism. Your work must be your own and
you must independently solve the problem and submit your own solution. Any other
material or sources of information you use must be referenced. Code and text you
submit will be compared with other submissions and various other sources on and
off the Internet. Any substantial similarities of your submission to unreferenced work
or material not created by yourself will be subject to academic misconduct procedures.
Marks will only be assigned for work you have done yourself (incl. finding and
discussing material from references, but not the referenced work; there are no marks
for code copied from elsewhere, but for either writing your own code or integrating
and adapting code that you have not written).
Background
This is assignment one of a portfolio that will be composed of three assignments. Each of
the four assignments is worth 1/3 , summing up to 100% of the total marks available for this
module.
Assignment
Consider the following situation:
A university library needs to cancel its subscription to a number of journals
to meet a proposed budget cut. There are n candidate journals j1, . . . , jn under
consideration. To decide which journals to cancel, the following information will
be used. For each journal ji
, 1 ≤ i ≤ n, we have the following.
• The citation counts coi
in the subject area and the citation counts cri
in
related areas refer to the average number of times per year that articles
appearing in ji are referenced in the appropriate scientific literature.
• The university rating ri of ji
is an average score between 1 and 5 given by
the faculty of the university as an indication of the importance of journal ji
,
in which the higher the score, the more important the journal is.
• The usage data ui of ji
is the average number of times hard copies of ji
have been borrowed or online copies of ji have been accessed per quarter.
• The subscription cost sci
.
Your task is to write a logic program for helping the university library with this process.
Using the information above, the program should determine which journals to cancel, and
the following constraints need to be satisfied.
• Citation count in subject: The average of the citation count in subject, per canceled
journal, must be smaller or equal than m.
• Citation count in related area: The average of the citation count in related area, per
canceled journal, must be smaller or equal than k.
2
• Faculty ratings: The average of the faculty rating, per canceled journal, must be
smaller or equal than 3.
• Journal usage: The total usage rate per quarter, of all the journals canceled from this
list, must be smaller or equal than p.
• Maximize the total subscription cost of journals canceled.
Task 1:
1. Write a logic program in ASP (problem encoding.lp) which finds all solutions to the
problem, given n, m, k, p, coi
, cri
, ri
, ui
, sci
for all 1 ≤ i ≤ n. Document your code so
the following is clear.
(a) How it should be used.
(b) What the approach to solving the problem is. In particular, you need to explain
what each rule achieves and how the rule achieves it.
Include your name and student id in the comments.
2. Write three problem instances (problem instancei.lp, for all i ∈ {1, 2, 3}) to test your
program. Document your code so it is clear what the instance is modeling.
Task 2: Write a short report on how logic programming relates to the problem:
1. Provide, in up to 300 words, an analysis of the design and functionality of your program
in terms of the Guess-and-Test modeling methodology.
2. Provide, in up to 300 words, two arguments for and two arguments against using logic
programming to solve the problem.
The word limits are an upper limit, not a target length. Text longer than the word limit for
each point will be ignored. Clearly mark each argument in your answer and indicate if it
is for or against. Only provide two arguments for or against; additional arguments will be
ignored.
Learning Outcomes Assessed
• Evaluate and apply the logic programming paradigm to solve a given problem.
• Discuss and contrast the issues, features, design and concepts of logic programming.
• Explain the conceptual foundations of logic programming.
Criteria for assessment
Task 1: maximum 50 marks, assessed according to the following scale
Fail 0 No code has been submitted.
1 − 14 Code does not run or does not produce valid output for any valid input; little
to no relevant documentation.
3
15 − 24 Code is valid without syntax errors and creates a valid output for every
valid input (or produces a suitable error message for valid cases it cannot
process). Even if the output is not a solution, a suitable attempt to solve the
problem is visible. An attempt to document the code has been made.
Pass 25 − 29 Code is valid without syntax errors and creates a valid output for every
valid input (or produces a suitable error message for valid cases it cannot
process). A suitable attempt to solve the problem has been made, that
will often find at least one solution (if there is any). The attempt has been
reasonably documented, but no consideration has been given to optimise
the program’s performance.
Merit 30 − 34 Code is valid without syntax errors and creates a valid output for every
valid input (or produces a suitable error message for valid cases it cannot
process). A suitable attempt to solve the problem has been made, that will
find all solutions (if there are any). The attempt has been well documented.
Distinction 35 − 50 Code is valid without syntax errors and creates a valid output for every valid
input. A suitable attempt to solve the problem has been made, that will find
all solutions (if there are any) for all problems, with excellent performance.
The attempt has been well documented and clearly shows an effort to optimise
the program’s performance, e.g. by using efficient algorithms and
data representations and also some heuristics.
Task 2: maximum 50 marks, assessed according to the following scale
Fail 0 No document has been submitted.
1 − 14 An insufficient number of arguments has been submitted and/or they hardly
apply to the logic programming paradigm. At most an incomplete attempt
to analyse the design and functioning of the program has been made.
15 − 24 An insufficient number of arguments has been submitted, but they show
some understanding of the logic programming paradigm. An attempt has
been made to analyse the design and functioning of the program.
Pass 25 − 29 The required number of valid arguments has been submitted. They are
generally valid for the logic programming paradigm, but they repeat similar
issues, do not consider the specific problem or contain mistakes in the
details. A suitable attempt has been made to analyse the design and functioning
of the program.
Merit 30 − 34 The required number of valid arguments has been submitted. They show
a clear understanding of the logic programming paradigm and how these
relate to the problem. The analysis of the design and functioning of the
program is well-developed, showing a clear understanding of the Guessand-Test
methodology.
Distinction 35 − 50 The required number of valid arguments has been submitted. They show
a clear understanding of the logic programming paradigm and the underlying
theoretical concepts and/or realisations on programmable machines
and how these relate to the problem. The analysis of the design and functioning
of the program shows a clear understanding of the Guess-and-Test
methodology and shows an understanding of related performance issues.
Feedback and suggestion for future learning
Feedback on your coursework will address the above criteria. Feedback and marks will be
returned on 30.05.22 via Learning Central. This will be supplemented with oral feedback on
request.