sitemap
FOLLOW SNITCHSEEKER:

Email Us!

Members

There are 1365 users online including...
CharlessAvefs , Stevendalo , Lewisuhaflift , Emzily , Evawno , Svetlytq , Svetluui

7 members
1358 guests.

Members in Chat:



If this is your first visit, be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above. You may have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Go Back   SnitchSeeker.com > Forums > Daily Prophet (News) > Harry Potter News


Harry Potter News Latest news and rumors about the Harry Potter world!

All News Forum Rules and FAQs apply. Click to view.

Reply
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
  #1 (permalink)  
Old 05-05-2004, 12:25 AM
ruperts_babe ruperts_babe is offline
 
Default

[img]http://www.snitchseeker.com/images/news/hp_grandpre_80.jpg' align='middle'> College student uses Quidditch for an experiment -

Summary:
Hampshire College Student Uses J.K. Rowling's Quidditch as Basis for Artificial Intelligence Experiment

Article:

Thanks to Wizardnews

Quote:
AMHERST, MASS., May 4 (AScribe Newswire) -- Although enrolled in Hampshire College, not Hogwarts Academy, Raphael Crawford-Marks has spent the past year fine-tuning his Quidditch skills. Crawford-Marks - set to graduate on May 22 - has created a computerized version of the rapid-fire game played by young witches and warlocks in J.K. Rowling's series of Harry Potter novels. But Crawford-Marks is doing far more than playing a video game: he's running an artificial intelligence experiment that involves computerized generation of teams that either proceed in competition or fall by the wayside according to their ability to adapt to the Quidditch environment. 

      Put simply, teams evolve rather than being hand coded into the computer. Players are never directly told what to do. In Darwinian terms, teams learn what behavior is desirable by surviving and their desirable traits get passed along in the evolutionary process. 

      In Crawford-Marks' project, titled "Virtual Witches and Warlocks: Computational Evolution of Teamwork and Strategy in a Dynamic, Heterogeneous and Noisy 3-D Environment," two separate computer programs talk to one another. One is a Quidditch simulator with a built-in fitness function that evaluates each team's performance and likelihood to produce sought-after results, such as scoring a goal. A smaller program generates teams one by one-setting up players in roles as chasers, beaters and seekers-and passes them into the game. Those who perform well survive to play another day and their desirable traits pass on to following generations. 

      In order to graduate, every Hampshire College student must complete a yearlong independent project and thesis, called the Division III. Crawford-Marks picked his Quidditch project after a classroom comment by computer science professor Lee Spector, who suggested during a seminar on evolutionary computation that Quidditch could pose an interesting artificial intelligence problem. Spector and two of his former students had presented a paper on the pedagogical possibilities of virtual Quidditch as a "challenge problem" at the 2001 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference. For Crawford-Marks, who had taken two years off from college to work as a computer programmer in his hometown of San Francisco and whose other academic interests are film and creative writing, it sounded like the perfect problem and he ran with the idea. 

      Crawford-Marks became a fan of the Harry Potter books after he got interested in the challenge Spector posed. He read them for the first time last year, in Spanish while studying in Spain. 

      Rowling need fear no encroachment on her copyrighted territory: Crawford-Marks is using Quidditch only as an academic project and is being scrupulous in his documentation. 

      He is similarly careful in documenting the work of others. He is indebted to RoboCup soccer, which uses soccer as a model for the evolution of teams of cooperating agents and is considered a benchmark in artificial intelligence. "Virtual Witches and Warlocks" pushes past some limitations in RoboCup, which runs at real time, with one second in the game equivalent to one second in real life. Fittingly for Quidditch, Crawford-Marks' project must run much faster than real time in order for the programs to evaluate the hundreds to possibly thousands of players necessary for successful evolution. 

      "Virtual Witches and Warlocks" is built on a simulation environment called Breve, the Division III creation of another former Spector student named Jon Klein. And, the Quidditch-playing programs are constructed in a computer language called Push, invented by Spector, and developed further by Spector, Klein and another Hampshire professor, Chris Perry, who works in computer animation. 

      Crawford-Marks now calls his earliest work "kiddy Quidditch," as it evolved teams that played like he thinks six-year-olds might. But, now well past the 50th generation it starts to look a little more like Rowling's game, with a practically uncatchable Snitch. 

      He hopes to present a paper about his project at the next Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, along with his mentor Spector. Spector chairs the Hampshire faculty committee overseeing Crawford-Marks' academic work, and the Quidditch project is running on a big "Beowulf-style" cluster computer funded through a National Science Foundation grant to Spector, who was one of six professors nationwide recognized last year by the NSF as Distinguished Teaching Scholars. Computer science professor Jaime Davila is also on Crawford-Marks' faculty committee. 

      In addition to being a lot of fun, the Quidditch project enabled Crawford-Marks to master a range of computer science skills-development, design, programming, data analysis-and integrate them into a coherent research program. At the same time, he explored processes of co-evolution, genetic representation and evolution of teamwork. 

      Now that he's become an artificial intelligence wizard, Crawford-Marks plans to attend graduate school in computer science in a couple of years, but in the meantime will pursue creation of life in a slightly different form by working on his creative writing. 

Wizardnews
Reply With Quote
Old 05-05-2004, 12:56 AM   #2 (permalink)
Ravenclaw
Puffskein
 
Join Date: Dec 2003
Location: USA
Posts: 1,368
Default

:sorcerer:
vietgirlz_8706 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-05-2004, 02:49 AM   #3 (permalink)
Ravenclaw
Imp
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Kannnsasssss
Posts: 403
Default

Computer Science you gotta love it.
rongranger is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-05-2004, 06:18 AM   #4 (permalink)
Gryffindor
Dugbog
 
elvesrulez's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2004
Location: Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Posts: 127
Default

interesting info...JKR is so famous tat she is taken into academic studies too....
__________________
--> i love these smilies!!! <--
elvesrulez is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-05-2004, 09:10 AM   #5 (permalink)
Gryffindor
Dugbog
 
scarlett_wood's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Australia
Posts: 126
Default

that is really interesting!
scarlett_wood is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 05-06-2004, 03:15 AM   #6 (permalink)
Gryffindor
Puffskein
 
fleurdelacour17's Avatar
 
Join Date: Apr 2003
Location: Godric's Hollow
Posts: 1,075
Default

:sorcerer: that has been given a lot of deep thought and work into it...
__________________
JKR: Well I think anyone who is still shipping Harry/Hermione after this book -
ES: [whispered] Delusional!
JKR: Uh - no! But they need to go back and reread, I think.
ES: Thank you.
JKR: Yeah.
fleurdelacour17 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11-29-2004, 10:46 PM   #7 (permalink)
Gryffindor
Imp
 
aixla's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2003
Location: In mourning for the recently departed ...
Posts: 474
Default

OK, I know I found this bit of news somewhat late, but how cool is this? I love when people take HP and pull it into the world of academia. I myself did a project on human development and Kohlbergs Stages of Morality by studying the different HP characters. I have a friend who wrote her thesis on HP ... anyway, I just like to see that intelligent, grown up people are reading these books!
__________________

aixla is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-10-2005, 05:47 PM   #8 (permalink)
Hufflepuff
Snuffles' Ringo
Firecrab
 
Ruxanda's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: Dancing with the devil! hehe
Posts: 730
Default

This is great! I like to see that grown-ups read these books and even take to a scientific level!!! this is great!!!
__________________



Thanks vishu for the siggy!
Ruxanda is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 01-27-2005, 10:47 PM   #9 (permalink)
Gryffindor
Puffskein
 
dagger's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: JAPAN i want to!
Posts: 1,831
Sixth Year
Default

Wicked! They actually did it!
dagger is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 04-21-2005, 11:47 PM   #10 (permalink)
Hufflepuff
Dugbog
 
Join Date: Jan 2004
Posts: 134
Default

i waplaynna
__________________
crasyboy42 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-11-2005, 04:52 PM   #11 (permalink)
Gryffindor
Red Cap
 
Gryfindor_Seeker's Avatar
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oakdale, Minnesota USA
Posts: 73
Default

Awsome! it's about time someone did it
__________________
Gryfindor_Seeker is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2005, 08:22 PM   #12 (permalink)
Hufflepuff
Blast-Ended Skrewt
 
La La's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Columbus, GA
Posts: 16,142

Hogwarts RPG Name:
Arabelle Adriana Meyer
Fifth Year
Default
In Sirius denial Courageous Ginny Fan

thats awsome
__________________

Enough Trouble for a Lifetime
La La is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-09-2005, 08:30 PM   #13 (permalink)
Gryffindor
Gnome
 
kidpotter's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: texas, usa!
Posts: 266
Default

*giggles* Yes. That is a very awesome thingimobober. I do not know what to call it. *giggles harder*
kidpotter is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10-10-2005, 03:03 AM   #14 (permalink)
Hufflepuff
Dark Force Defense League
Sphinx
 
Nabs's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: GMT +8
Posts: 48,776

Ministry RPG Name:
Nikolai Vannacutt
Default
Nabs!Ama | | The Happy Hufflepuff

woah! that sounds wicked
__________________

Nikolai Vannacutt

RP Character Biographies
Ellebug Baking Blog

Nabs is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply
Thread Tools

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are Off



All times are GMT. The time now is 07:45 AM.


This Harry Potter and Wizarding World fan website and community is not endorsed by Hogwarts, Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, Warner Bros., Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, Rupert Grint, Quidditch, Deathly Hallows, Sorcerer's Stone, Wizards, Muggles, No-Maj, MACUSA, Newt Scamander, Video Games, Half-Blood Prince, Orders of the Phoenix, Goblet of Fire, Philosopher's Stones, Chamber of Secret, Pottermore, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Eddie Redmayne, Cursed Child, or any other official Harry Potter source.

All content is copyright ©2002 - 2022, SnitchSeeker.com unless stated otherwise. Privacy Policy

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
LinkBacks Enabled by vBSEO 3.3.2 © 2009, Crawlability, Inc.
Site designed by Richard Harris Design

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252