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Matchbox Educable Noughts And Crosses Engine
The Matchbox Educable Noughts and Crosses Engine (sometimes called the Machine Educable Noughts and Crosses Engine or MENACE) was a mechanical computer made from 304 matchboxes designed and built by artificial intelligence researcher Donald Michie in 1961. It was designed to play human opponents in games of noughts and crosses (tic-tac-toe) by returning a move for any given state of play and to refine its strategy through reinforcement learning. Michie did not have a computer readily available, so he worked around this restriction by building it out of matchboxes. The matchboxes used by Michie each represented a single possible layout of a noughts and crosses grid. When the computer first played, it would randomly choose moves based on the current layout. As it played more games, through a reinforcement loop, it disqualified strategies that led to losing games, and supplemented strategies that led to winning games. Michie held a tournament against MENACE in 1961, wherein he expe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tic-tac-toe
Tic-tac-toe (American English), noughts and crosses (Commonwealth English), or Xs and Os (Canadian or Irish English) is a paper-and-pencil game for two players who take turns marking the spaces in a three-by-three grid with ''X'' or ''O''. The player who succeeds in placing three of their marks in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row is the winner. It is a solved game, with a forced draw assuming best play from both players. Gameplay Tic-tac-toe is played on a three-by-three grid by two players, who alternately place the marks X and O in one of the nine spaces in the grid. In the following example, the first player (''X'') wins the game in seven steps: There is no universally-agreed rule as to who plays first, but in this article the convention that X plays first is used. Players soon discover that the best play from both parties leads to a draw. Hence, tic-tac-toe is often played by young children who may not have discovered the optimal strategy. Because of the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Footnotes
A note is a string of text placed at the bottom of a page in a book or document or at the end of a chapter, volume, or the whole text. The note can provide an author's comments on the main text or citations of a reference work in support of the text. Footnotes are notes at the foot of the page while endnotes are collected under a separate heading at the end of a chapter, volume, or entire work. Unlike footnotes, endnotes have the advantage of not affecting the layout of the main text, but may cause inconvenience to readers who have to move back and forth between the main text and the endnotes. In some editions of the Bible, notes are placed in a narrow column in the middle of each page between two columns of biblical text. Numbering and symbols In English, a footnote or endnote is normally flagged by a superscripted number immediately following that portion of the text the note references, each such footnote being numbered sequentially. Occasionally, a number between brack ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hexapawn
Hexapawn is a deterministic two-player game invented by Martin Gardner. It is played on a rectangular board of variable size, for example on a 3×3 board or on a regular chessboard. On a board of size ''n''×''m'', each player begins with ''m'' pawns, one for each square in the row closest to them. The goal of each player is to either advance a pawn to the opposite end of the board or leave the other player with no legal moves. Hexapawn on the 3×3 board is a solved game; with perfect play, White will always lose in 3 moves (1.b2 axb2 2.cxb2 c2 3.a2 c1#). Indeed, Gardner specifically constructed it as a game with a small game tree in order to demonstrate how it could be played by a heuristic AI implemented by a mechanical computer based on Donald Michie's Matchbox Educable Noughts and Crosses Engine. A variant of this game is octopawn, which is played on a 4×4 board with 4 pawns on each side. It is a forced win for White. Rules As in chess, a pawn may be moved in two differe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
QI XL
In traditional Chinese culture Chinese culture () is one of the world's oldest cultures, originating thousands of years ago. The culture prevails across a large geographical region in East Asia and is extremely diverse and varying, with customs and traditions varying grea ... and the East Asian cultural sphere, ''qi'', also ''ki'' or ''chi'' in Wade–Giles romanization ( ), is believed to be a vital force forming part of any living entity. Literally meaning "vapor", "air", or "breath", the word ''qi'' is often translated as "vital energy", "vital force", "material energy", or simply as "energy". ''Qi'' is the central underlying principle in Chinese traditional Chinese medicine, traditional medicine and in Chinese martial arts. The practice of cultivating and balancing ''qi'' is called ''qigong''. Believers in ''qi'' describe it as a vital force, the flow of which must be unimpeded for health. ''Qi'' is a pseudoscientific, unverified concept, and is unrelated to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are a series of lectures on a single topic each, which have been held at the Royal Institution in London each year since 1825, missing 1939–1942 because of the Second World War. The lectures present scientific subjects to a general audience, including young people, in an informative and entertaining manner. Michael Faraday initiated the Christmas Lecture series in 1825, at a time when organised education for young people was scarce. Faraday presented nineteen series of lectures in all. History The Royal Institution's Christmas Lectures were first held in 1825, and have continued on an annual basis since then except for four years during the Second World War. They have been hosted each year at the Royal Institution itself, except in 1929 and between 2005–2006, each time due to refurbishment of the building. They were created by Michael Faraday, who later hosted the lecture season on nineteen occasions. The Nobel laureate Sir William B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ferranti Pegasus
Pegasus was an early British vacuum-tube (valve) computer built by Ferranti, Ltd that pioneered design features to make life easier for both engineers and programmers. Originally it was named the Ferranti Package Computer as its hardware design followed that of the Elliott 401 with modular plug-in packages. Much of the development was the product of three men: W. S. (Bill) Elliott (hardware); Christopher Strachey (software) and Bernard Swann (marketing and customer support). It was Ferranti's most popular valve computer with 38 being sold. The first Pegasus was delivered in 1956 and the last was delivered in 1959. Ferranti received funding for the development from the National Research Development Corporation (NRDC). At least two Pegasus machines survive, one in The Science Museum, London and one which was displayed in the Science and Industry Museum, Manchester but which has now been removed to the storage in the Science Museum archives at Wroughton. The Pegasus in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is considered among the most prestigious universities in the world. Stanford was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., who had died of typhoid fever at age 15 the previous year. Leland Stanford was a U.S. senator and former governor of California who made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students on October 1, 1891, as a coeducational and non-denominational institution. Stanford University struggled financially after the death of Leland Stanford in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, provost of Stanford Frederick Terman inspired and supported faculty and graduates' entrepreneu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artificial Neural Networks
Artificial neural networks (ANNs), usually simply called neural networks (NNs) or neural nets, are computing systems inspired by the biological neural networks that constitute animal brains. An ANN is based on a collection of connected units or nodes called artificial neurons, which loosely model the neurons in a biological brain. Each connection, like the synapses in a biological brain, can transmit a signal to other neurons. An artificial neuron receives signals then processes them and can signal neurons connected to it. The "signal" at a connection is a real number, and the output of each neuron is computed by some non-linear function of the sum of its inputs. The connections are called ''edges''. Neurons and edges typically have a ''weight'' that adjusts as learning proceeds. The weight increases or decreases the strength of the signal at a connection. Neurons may have a threshold such that a signal is sent only if the aggregate signal crosses that threshold. Typically, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scatter Plot
A scatter plot (also called a scatterplot, scatter graph, scatter chart, scattergram, or scatter diagram) is a type of plot or mathematical diagram using Cartesian coordinates to display values for typically two variables for a set of data. If the points are coded (color/shape/size), one additional variable can be displayed. The data are displayed as a collection of points, each having the value of one variable determining the position on the horizontal axis and the value of the other variable determining the position on the vertical axis. Overview A scatter plot can be used either when one continuous variable is under the control of the experimenter and the other depends on it or when both continuous variables are independent. If a parameter exists that is systematically incremented and/or decremented by the other, it is called the ''control parameter'' or independent variable and is customarily plotted along the horizontal axis. The measured or dependent variable is cu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
