Poll #33: 11/01/02 - 12/11/02


What's Your Schooling in AI?
Have you taken any AI-related classes? What level? [310 votes total]
Learned it all online or from various texts (like the Game Programming Gems series). (66) 21%
Took some courses in high school, but nothing else. (9) 3%
Took some courses in college, but nothing else. (69) 22%
Got my Master's in it, in fact. (25) 8%
Got my PhD in it, in fact. (8) 3%
No classes or references, really; I'm purely self-taught in response to the needs of my job. (37) 12%
What I know about AI comes from my fiddling with games featuring ExAI and that's about it. (19) 6%
I know nothing about AI...I just like the colors here. (77) 25%

Steve's Comments: Very interesting indeed.

Honestly I'd expected a bit more response from folks indicating that most of their AI experience had either come from books like the Game Programming Gems series or was self-taught using references and knowledge gained from the Web. I'm surprised that the reponses were as "level" as they were, frankly. A full 36% of respondents said that they'd taken some kind of course, whether it was in high school, college, or a full up degree of some kind. The self-taught folks were only represented by 12% of respondents (though if you add in the 21% who said that books and online sites were their primary sources you do get up to 35%).

And I guess 25% just liked the colors....hookay....