more info / quasi-blog
This game was inspired by Shannon's "A Mind-reading(?) Machine" and
Hagelbarger's "SEER, A SEquence Extrapolating Robot", both from the early 1950's.
Both were at Bell Labs at the time. As legend has it, they had their machines compete against
each other, and Shannon's won, by a margin of 55-45.
Here is a copy of each paper, in which they describe their machines in detail and
even provide schematics.
A Mind-reading(?) Machine
SEER, A SEquence Extrapolating Robot
More recent work in online learning involves "A Context-Tree Weighting Method" [Willems et al.] and "How to use
expert advice" [Cesa-Bianchi et al.]. The current implementation of the applet uses a variant on the Context-Tree
Weighting Method. While this method performs adequately, it can be beaten relatively easily by certain sequences.
Future work involves combining various kinds of 'experts' using the results in "How to use expert advice". Hopefully
this will overcome the limitations of the current algorithm.
The idea of making the Mindreader into a game belongs to Professors Yoav Freund and Rob Schapire. They also developed the
first version of the Mindreader game, upon which the current applet is based.
View my project presentation and some preliminary data analysis slides here!
Download the relevant code here. Note the applet is built using the Processing platform.
Last updated 4.17.06 11:21pm by Anup Doshi
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