mscroggs.co.uk
mscroggs.co.uk

subscribe

Blog

 2017-11-14 
A few weeks ago, I took the copy of MENACE that I built to Manchester Science Festival, where it played around 300 games against the public while learning to play Noughts and Crosses. The group of us operating MENACE for the weekend included Matt Parker, who made two videos about it. Special thanks go to Matt, plus Katie Steckles, Alison Clarke, Andrew Taylor, Ashley Frankland, David Williams, Paul Taylor, Sam Headleand, Trent Burton, and Zoe Griffiths for helping to operate MENACE for the weekend.
As my original post about MENACE explains in more detail, MENACE is a machine built from 304 matchboxes that learns to play Noughts and Crosses. Each box displays a possible position that the machine can face and contains coloured beads that correspond to the moves it could make. At the end of each game, beads are added or removed depending on the outcome to teach MENACE to play better.

Saturday

On Saturday, MENACE was set up with 8 beads of each colour in the first move box; 3 of each colour in the second move boxes; 2 of each colour in third move boxes; and 1 of each colour in the fourth move boxes. I had only included one copy of moves that are the same due to symmetry.
The plot below shows the number of beads in MENACE's first box as the day progressed.

Sunday

Originally, we were planning to let MENACE learn over the course of both days, but it learned more quickly than we had expected on Saturday, so we reset is on Sunday, but set it up slightly differently. On Sunday, MENACE was set up with 4 beads of each colour in the first move box; 3 of each colour in the second move boxes; 2 of each colour in third move boxes; and 1 of each colour in the fourth move boxes. This time, we left all the beads in the boxes and didn't remove any due to symmetry.
The plot below shows the number of beads in MENACE's first box as the day progressed.

The data

You can download the full set of data that we collected over the weekend here. This includes the first two moves and outcomes of all the games over the two days, plus the number of beads in each box at the end of each day. If you do something interesting (or non-interesting) with the data, let me know!
                        
(Click on one of these icons to react to this blog post)

You might also enjoy...

Comments

Comments in green were written by me. Comments in blue were not written by me.
WRT the comment 2017-11-17, and exactly one year later, I had the same thing happen whilst running MENACE in a 'Resign' loop for a few hours, unattended. When I returned, the orange overlay had appeared, making the screen quite difficult to read on an iPad.
g0mrb
                 Reply
On the JavaScript version, MENACE2 (a second version of MENACE which learns in the same way, to play against the original) keeps setting the 6th move as NaN, meaning it cannot function. Is there a fix for this?
Lambert
                 Reply
what would happen if you loaded the boxes slightly differently. if you started with one bead corresponding to each move in each box. if the bead caused the machine to lose you remove only that bead. if the game draws you leave the bead in play if the bead causes a win you put an extra bead in each of the boxes that led to the win. if the box becomes empty you remove the bead that lead to that result from the box before
Ian
                 Reply
Hi, I was playing with MENACE, and after a while the page redrew with a Dragon Curves design over the top. MENACE was still working alright but it was difficult to see what I was doing due to the overlay. I did a screen capture of it if you want to see it.
Russ
                 Reply
 Add a Comment 


I will only use your email address to reply to your comment (if a reply is needed).

Allowed HTML tags: <br> <a> <small> <b> <i> <s> <sup> <sub> <u> <spoiler> <ul> <ol> <li> <logo>
To prove you are not a spam bot, please type "oitar" backwards in the box below (case sensitive):

Archive

Show me a random blog post
 2025 

Mar 2025

How to write a crossnumber

Jan 2025

Christmas (2024) is over
Friendly squares
 2024 
▼ show ▼
 2023 
▼ show ▼
 2022 
▼ show ▼
 2021 
▼ show ▼
 2020 
▼ show ▼
 2019 
▼ show ▼
 2018 
▼ show ▼
 2017 
▼ show ▼
 2016 
▼ show ▼
 2015 
▼ show ▼
 2014 
▼ show ▼
 2013 
▼ show ▼
 2012 
▼ show ▼

Tags

interpolation anscombe's quartet convergence chess rhombicuboctahedron machine learning errors finite element method hexapawn guest posts folding tube maps stickers gather town martin gardner sport people maths crossnumbers matrices logs sound databet chalkdust magazine big internet math-off dragon curves news oeis flexagons numbers map projections a gamut of games dinosaurs trigonometry speed logo zines national lottery manchester 24 hour maths hyperbolic surfaces graphs hats game show probability data datasaurus dozen error bars sorting gerry anderson fractals determinants polynomials bots christmas the aperiodical bempp inverse matrices phd crossnumber light harriss spiral weather station geometry countdown statistics estimation regular expressions captain scarlet pac-man electromagnetic field latex python bubble bobble youtube inline code royal institution hannah fry tennis php kings talking maths in public london edinburgh runge's phenomenon craft palindromes finite group sobolev spaces rugby asteroids squares misleading statistics arithmetic royal baby probability realhats graph theory pythagoras propositional calculus recursion bodmas data visualisation computational complexity binary mean quadrilaterals reddit approximation pizza cutting plastic ratio friendly squares dates correlation geogebra menace pi accuracy braiding nine men's morris preconditioning tmip games reuleaux polygons cambridge crosswords weak imposition ucl folding paper draughts coins raspberry pi game of life signorini conditions puzzles manchester science festival matt parker matrix of minors mathsjam fence posts standard deviation fonts live stream crochet turtles radio 4 platonic solids world cup golden ratio gaussian elimination numerical analysis london underground mathslogicbot boundary element methods triangles javascript wave scattering matrix of cofactors books final fantasy exponential growth simultaneous equations chebyshev cross stitch pi approximation day programming dataset christmas card wool matrix multiplication noughts and crosses mathsteroids pascal's triangle frobel video games newcastle go golden spiral curvature european cup advent calendar ternary football stirling numbers logic

Archive

Show me a random blog post
▼ show ▼
© Matthew Scroggs 2012–2025