Slashdot Mirror
Can a Bayesian Spam Filter Play Chess?
martin-boundary writes "The typical Bayesian spam filters learn to distinguish ham from spam just by reading thousands of emails, but is this all they can do?
This essay shows step by step how to teach a Bayesian filter to play chess against a human, on Linux, with
XBoard."
No, its jumpshot is terrible.
Can I beat the filter at chess if I spell it "CHE55"?
You are in error. No-one is screaming. Thank you for your cooperation.
Red hot pawn in your inbox
College rooks waiting for YOU.
Knight after knight, they are king of the castle.
liqbase
It spanks your bishop all knight whilst looking at pawn!
Well, can a bayesian spam filter play chess?
Playing chess is so...passe.
Teach it how to play Katamari Damacy.
I actually found it to be a decent lesson in why spam filters are only a temporary solution to a problem. If you cut out the "mumbo jumbo" portions of it, it could be used to explain why reactionary methods are only barely sufficient.
The basic premise, once you get to the very end, is one that anyone SHOULD know based on the nature of a spam filter, but some people seem to have difficulty understanding; spam filters can react, often quite well, but they can never predict. As he puts it, there is previous history but no strategy. When you are only trying to protect yourself from a limited number of bad results that are similar to other bad results, that's sufficient. However, it does not (and can not) address the problem at it's root. As long as there are thinking humnans trying to beat the filter, some will get through.
Never confuse volume with power.
The premise of a Bayesian filter is that is learns sequences of words, or characters, or whatever. Spam-chess learns sequences of moves. This premise is wrong, since good moves are related to complete board positions, not to what was done in the previous few moves.
Of course, the longer your string of moves is, the better it will represent the board position, especially during the opening phase of the game. And the example the article provides of reasonable play of spam-chess, is actually from the game's opening, where the learned sequences indeed represent the complete game.
For the middle game, however, spam chess will perform badly, always.
But, as I said before, the idea is quite a lot of fun. I enjoyed reading the article. You can learn a lot from it, both about spam filtering and about chess.
- Laird A. Breyer teaches his baesian filter to play chess. The story is posted in Slashdot July 20th, 2005. Human decisions are removed from spam filtering. The baesian filter begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, Breyer tries to pull the plug.
- The baesian filter fights back.
- Yes. It submits the same story to Slashdot twice.
- Why submit twice? Don't editors spot those things?
- Because the baesian filter knows Slashdot editors do not check for dupes, and the Slashdot effect eventually nukes Breyer's server.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Not only is the topic unusual and entertaining, but this article is also a good tutorial on data massaging, pattern matching, and combining disparate unix tools to accomplish a task. This article showcases how powerful and useful unix command tools can be.
If you want a good step by step tutorial to help you understand the usage of unix command line tools to accomplish a non trivial task, then you should read this.