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∂AIL Mr. Evan S. Gamble↓1114 S. Noland↓Independence, Mo. 64050∞
Dear Mr. Gamble:

	However intelligent and energetic, your son will find
will find considerable difficulty in pursuing intellectual and
business interests simultaneously.  Because the latter are always
presenting crises and deadlines, they usually predominate in
someone trying to do both.  Being a student, regardless of the
mixture of classwork and self study, is best done as a full time
occupation.

	The universities with the largest programs in artificial
intelligence and computer science generally are Stanford, M.I.T.,
Carnegie-Mellon and the University of Texas at Austin.  In all of
these schools it is a graduate program within a computer science
department, but undergraduates can take part if they are sufficiently
intelligent, energetic and co-operative.  In my opinion, making
a large contribution to artificial intelligence research requires
a strong mathematics background, especially including mathematical
logic.

	Stanford University work in artificial intelligence includes
theory (mainly problems of representing common sense knowledge
in the memory of a computer and common sense modes of inference),
applications to mathematical logic including interactive proof-checking
and theorem proving applied especially to verifying the correctness
of computer programs,
robotics (industrial assembly and a variety of projects in
computer vision) and heuristic programming (concentrating on
the development of "expert systems" that incorporate the expertise
of humans in a specialized domain like chemical structure or
bacterial diseases).  However, we don't even allow graduate
students to specialize exclusively in artificial intelligence right away
but require a broader study of computer science.

	Stanford does not have an undergraduate computer science
major.  Students aiming at computer science major in electrical
engineering, mathematics or mathematical sciences (which includes
mathematics, statistics, operations research and computer science).

	Useful books include %2Artificial Intelligence and
Natural Man%1 by Margaret Boden and the texts
%2Principles of Artificial Intelligence%1
by Nils Nilsson and %2Articial Intelligence%1 by Patrick Winston.

	I hope this is helpful.

.sgn