Claus Reinke wrote: > I'm not currently in teaching, but I'd be interested to > hear about uses of computer-go in this context, ie, > not so much as a specialist course but as a focus for > programming and group projects.
Let me tell you the experiences in my group at Jena University. I am in a joint faculty for mathematics and computer science. http://www.minet.uni-jena.de/ My chair is for applied mathematics (discrete optimization), but my research interests are rather broad, ranging from number theory and discrete stochastics over experimental mathematics in general to theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence and bio-informatics. I returned to computer-go only after a several-year-long break. In the meantime we were busy in the context of "automatic and computer-aided inventing of board games". The task of the computer typically was/is to play a newly invented game (or game variant) immediately with reasonable strength. For this purpose, "basic Monte-Carlo" (evaluating direct successors of the root position by random games) is a wonderful tool. And it was/is a very easy entry step for students or groups of students: They only have to program the rules of a game, and the computer starts to play (graphics was never a topic; most programs have output in tet mode). I NEVER asked students to use more sophisticated techniques like UCT, "instance-sharing", or tree growth. Interessentingly, several students themselves went such roads: They were not satisfied with the playing strength of basic MC and started to read about UCT, or even to develop their own algorithms: - Joerg Sameith and Stefan Schwarz in the context of "EinStein wurfelt nicht" (result was the vary nice program "Hanfried") - Joerg Guenther, concerning Antonow's connection game "ConHex" (result was the rather strong program GuentHex 2.0; GuentHex 1 was almost pure basic MC) - Jakob Erdmann (Ph.D. student, with a 3-Hirn-grant) has become sort of an expert on UCT for multi-valued games. He also made a program for my game "Seasons of the Sun". - Lisa Schreiber found nice implementations for Reiner Knizia's "Heckmeck am Bratwurmeck (Zoch-Verlag) and for "Treffer" (by Michail Antonow, unpublished yet). - Frank Schneider (not a student in Jena, but interested in our work from outside; chess programmer) invented his own game to have a workbench for his UCT experiments. Probably, earlier or later also some student(s) will catch fire on computer-go. Other students simply made their Monte-Carlo task, got their certificates and were happy. Here are some links: * Long Night of Science, November 2007 http://www.althofer.de/lange-nacht-jena.html * Workshop "Analysis, Design, and Programming of Games; June 2008" http://www.althofer.de/workshop-2008.html * Game "Seasons of the Sun" http://www.althofer.de/seasons-sample.html Ingo. -- Psssst! Schon vom neuen GMX MultiMessenger gehört? Der kann`s mit allen: http://www.gmx.net/de/go/multimessenger _______________________________________________ computer-go mailing list computer-go@computer-go.org http://www.computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go/
