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Young Irish Scientists Win Award for Linux Project

Posted by emmett on from the this-is-just-plain-cool dept.

Trevor Johnston writes "Last week, three Irish students used a Linux box together with an old Basic programming language running on an Amiga emulator to display graphically the output of their own computer learning program. For their troubles they were awarded 'Best Use of Information Technology' at Ireland's Young Scientist Exhibition."

1 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. 2 armed bandit problem by gargle · · Score: 4

    It has two methods with which to complete the task and by running a certain amount of games, the computer can work out which is the better method to use.

    This is actually the 2 armed bandit problem: you have a 2 armed jack pot machine, and everytime you pull an arm, it gives a certain payoff, but the payoff is probalistic. So do you keep pulling the arm that has the higher average payoff? Or do you try the other arm? It's a tradeoff between exploitation and exploration, and the solution is surprisingly mathematically involved (see Gasoml by Goldberg).

    John Holland showed in the 70s that the genetic algorithm is a near optimal solution to this problem. So in a simple way, these students have rediscovered the essential issues of genetic algorithms.