New Go-playing program teaches itself, beating previous program 100-0

A potentially momentous milestone has been reached in the decades-old battle between human intelligence and artificial intelligence.

Go playing board

Until 18 months ago ago, the ancient Chinese game of Go had firmly resisted attempts to apply computer technology — the best human players were substantially better than the best computer programs. This changed abruptly in March 2016, when a Google computer program named “AlphaGo” defeated the reigning world champion 4-1, a defeat that shocked many observers, who had not expected to see this for many years.

Now a new computer program, called “AlphaGo Zero,” which literally taught itself

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Fibonacci: A man of numbers

Keith Devlin, well-known mathematician and author, has published two books on Leonardo Pisano (Leonardo of Pisa), better known to many today as “Fibonacci,” short for “filius Bonacci” (son of the Bonacci family), a name ascribed to Leonardo by the 19th century French historian Guillaume Libri. Devlin argues that Leonardo deserves to be ranked among the all-time most influential scientists and mathematicians, mainly for his key role in popularizing the Hindu-Arabic decimal system to Western Europe during the early Renaissance.

Devlin’s books are:

The Man of Numbers: Fibonacci’s Arithmetic Revolution Finding Fibonacci: The Quest to Rediscover the Forgotten Mathematical Genius Who

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Talks on experimental mathematics

On 3 October 2017 I presented six talks at a seminar on experimental mathematics at the University of Newcastle, in Newcastle, NSW Australia.

Here are the titles and abstracts of these talks, plus URLs for the complete PDF viewgraph files:

1. What is experimental mathematics? (15 minutes)

This overview briefly summarizes what is meant by “experimental mathematics”, as pioneered in large part by the late Jonathan Borwein. We also explain why experimental mathematics offers a unique opportunity to involve a much broader community in the process of mathematical discovery and proof — high school students, undergraduate students, computer scientists,

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