[computer-go] Explanation to MoGo paper wanted.

[Łukasz Lew]

On 7/3/07, chrilly <c.donninger at wavenet.at> wrote:
> > Hello all,
> >
> > We just presented our paper describing MoGo's improvements at ICML,
> > and we thought we would pass on some of the feedback and corrections
> > we have received.
> > (http://www.machinelearning.org/proceedings/icml2007/papers/387.pdf)
> >
> I have the feeling that the paper is important, but it is completly
> obfuscated by the strange reinforcement learning notation and jargon. Can
> anyone explain it in Go-programming words?
> Is the RLOG Evaluation function used for evaluation or for just selecting
> the best move? (by doing a 1 Ply search).

They are probably referring to this paper:
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~mmueller/ps/silver-ijcai2007.pdf


> Can anyone explain me, why it is necessary to obfuscate things at all? Why
> is a move an action and not just a move, a game an episode and not a game?
> Is it less scientific if coders than myself can understand it?

It's because Go is not only game in the world and certainly not only
reinforcement learning problem. They are using a widely accepted
terminology.

>
> It was pointed out by Donald Knuth in his paper on Alpha-Beta, that the -
> simple - algorithm was not understood for a long time, because of the
> inappropriate mathematical notation. For recursive functions, (pseudo-)code
> is much better suited than the mathematical notation. Actually its
> pseudo-mathematic notation.
> Why is this inappropriate notation still used?
>
> I have build just for fun a simple BackGammon engine. I think it does what
> the paper proposses for the Monte-Carlo-Part. It uses a simple evaluation
> function to select the next move in the Rollout aka Monte-Carlo simulation.
> The engine does not build up an UCT-tree. It uses UCT only at the root. The
> rollout always starts at the first ply.
> The 1ply engine has not the slightest chance against sophisticated
> BackGammon programm. But the simple minded UCT version is already a
> serious opponent.

Can You share the source?

> By build up an UCT tree one could probably reach top Backgammon level (the
> effort to do this does not pay. The backgammon market is saturated).
> The simple engine behaves in a give position and dieces deterministic. But
> the roll of the dices generates sufficient randomnes.
>
> Chrilly

Best Regards,
Lukasz

>
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