Wumpus World

I have been getting many searches for the Wumpus World code.  The LISP version is located at the AIMA website.

For the java version, goto the AIMA Java Code web page.

There are prolog versions of the Wumpus World as well.

Progress Report – December 2008

The month began by reviewing my college Probability and Statistics book (Devore 1991).  I needed to review standard probability concepts mentioned in articles and the Stanford machine learning class.  For example, the article Learning with a Mixture of Trees (Meila and Jordan 2000) the authors explain the new algorithm by using Joint Probabilities and probabilistic mathematics to describe the algorithm – a similar used by Dr. Ng in his machine learning lectures.

WISE Compiled

After fixing the return of thread status call from a boolean to the thread.state type, inspite of the other 60 coding warnings, I successfully started the WISE software, and exited.

I will explore the User’s manual further on setting up a trial run.

WISE

This week I downloaded the WISE software from University of Texas, Arlington (UTA). According to the build instructions it was developed using Java 1.3.0; however, that is not available and the latest is Java v1.6 u11. After installing the JDK in my Linux environment, I started to compile the program ran into 73 warnings and 1 one error. Two changes are to the dialog box show() and hide() functions; they were replaced by setVisible(true) and setVisible(false), respectively. There are other errors, but I am still reviewing them.

Genetic Algorithms and Programming

Today I was reading an article on GP-EndChess: Using Genetic Programming to Evolve Chess Endgame Players by Ami Hauptman and Moshe Sipper. The article discusses how the authors used Genetic Programming to develop chess strategies in various type chess endgames (KQRKQR, KRRKRR, and KRKR). The authors consulted with chess masters, then tested their work against CRAFTY. Because of the promising results of the research, the authors aimed three paths for future activity:

• improve the evolved programs’ performance against the above and other endgames,
• branch out beyond endgames,
• analyze the evolved cognition as to its resemblance and difference from human cognition.

The loftiest goal is using this effort to branch out beyond endgames. Since I am starting new I would start with Quinlan’s work, then perhaps look at Ken Thompson’s chess endgame effort, and finally attempt to duplicate this articles effort.

Also, I was exploring John Koza’s web site on Genetic Programming. There is some very interesting information; for example, I downloaded and read the power point presentation on Genetic Programming and Genetic Algorithms.

My biggest complaint is the cost of obtaining scientific articles. Although I understand that publishers need a return on their investment in publishing, I find it excessive to download a PDF document for $25. Publishers should make resonable to obtain such articles. For now, I will be using my local University to access and obtains articles of interest.

For references, see the reference page.