Karl Reinsch's Blog

Pac-Man, How Does It Work?

Karl W. Reinsch — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 13:00:10 +0000

Speaking of game AI…two Pac-Man-related links are making the blog rounds these days – one of them is new. The new one is Chad Birch’s “Understanding Pac-Man Ghost Behavior”. It is clear and well illustrated. As Chad points out, he was inspired by and used Jamey Pittman’s “Pac-Man Dossier”. This is a nice resource. It [...] Related posts:

Detecting Poker Bots

Karl W. Reinsch — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 13:00:38 +0000

The folks at the PokerStars online poker service actively police their games to make sure that bots are not being used to gain advantage. Here’s a recent post from their Game Security staff demonstrating that they paid a visit to one player in order to witness the playing and playstyle in person. It ends with [...] Related posts:

WF Rules: Unleashing The Rule Engine Within .NET

Karl W. Reinsch — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 12:45:07 +0000

I have written previously about WF Rules, the rule engine that ships in .NET. As I have described, this rule engine is bundled in .NET versions 3.0 and higher, and is included in the default installation of Windows Vista and Windows 7. (If you are using .NET 4.0, you need the Extended / Full install [...] Related posts:

Action Videogames Train Your Brain For Decision-Making

Karl W. Reinsch — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:45:12 +0000

Researcher Daphne Bavelier is back with more videogame research. Once again, the study used The Sims 2, Call Of Duty 2, and Unreal Tournament. The results of this study showed that those who played the action games made quicker decisions: “In the problem-solving exercise, the action-game players made decisions 25 percent faster than the strategy [...] Related posts:

Chernoff Face Tutorial on Flowing Data

Karl W. Reinsch — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 12:45:24 +0000

If you’ve read Blindsight, then you have come across Chernoff faces. I recently spotted a tutorial on Flowing Data for using Chernoff faces with R. Related posts:Big Data Big Data (Again) and NoSQL Realtime Datamining Of Location Data Related posts:

How Language Shapes How We Think

Karl W. Reinsch — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:45:23 +0000

The New York Times has a fascinating article on how the language we speak may or may not shape the way we think. The title is “Does Your Language Shape How You Think?” and it is written by Guy Deutscher. This is clearly a topic that has been plagued by pseudo-science over the decades, and [...] Related posts:

Data Dangers Redux

Karl W. Reinsch — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:45:58 +0000

Recent bit from the New York Times about burglars picking houses based on Facebook status updates. Not surprising at all. Does remember to namecheck PleaseRobMe.com. See also Tom Scott’s project that datamines public phone numbers from Facebook. Related posts:Realtime Datamining Of Location Data How Language Shapes How We Think Chernoff Face Tutorial on Flowing Data Related posts:

Your Brain On Computers

Karl W. Reinsch — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:45:44 +0000

The New York Times has had a nice series of articles recently on the topic of brains and computers entitled “Your Brain On Computers”. Related posts:To Remember And To Forget The Gaming Brain This Is Your Brain On Tetris Related posts:

The Matthew Effect Shows Up in ADHD Diagnosis

Karl W. Reinsch — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:45:37 +0000

It seems that the Matthew Effect shows up in the diagnosis of ADHD. If you have read Outliers, this shouldn’t come as a surprise. No related posts. No related posts.

Every Rubik’s Cube Position Solvable In 20 Moves Or Less Proven

Karl W. Reinsch — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 12:45:24 +0000

It is always interesting to see computing power used to completely solve a game such as Connect Four or Checkers. Now, it has been proven that every position of a Rubik’s Cube can be solved in 20 moves or less. “It took fifteen years after the introduction of the Cube to find the first position [...] Related posts:

Opening Moves