Thursday, March 31, 2011

Rock-Paper-Scissors: You vs. the Computer

Rock-Paper-Scissors: You vs. the Computer - NYTimes.com

This is a very simple application of Artificial Intelligence, but a great illustration of what so much AI, machine learning and data mining is based on -- inference from prior experience. In this application, the algorithm keeps track of your previous sequence of choices. It then searches for the same pattern of plays you have made against its database of 200,000 rounds of the game. Of course, it keeps your own sequence in its database, thus adding to its database of experience, hopefully improving its outcome against you, as well as others. The more rounds you play, the longer the sequence it has to use and look for an improved guess of what you're most likely to play next.

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