dfan

29 ms·

241.
by dfan 12y ago
Yes, pattern matching is about as fundamental to Haskell as assignment is to C.
242.
by dfan 12y ago
It's not clear to me whether that includes the evaluation engine or whether he's communicating with an external process. If it's the latter then I agree that it seems like a lot.
243.
How to Catch a Chess Cheater(uschess.org)
69 points by dfan 12y ago|20 comments
244.
by dfan 12y ago
I know, doesn't it? But sometimes someone finds a way to simplify the patch so it's less code and almost as effective, and sometimes future improvements are made easier because the existing code is easier to work with. And it&#x27
245.
by dfan 12y ago
Some followup conversation in the comments at Ellenberg's blog: http://quomodocumque.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/should-andrew-...
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by dfan 12y ago
It's pretty clear cut. I think that Magnus Carlsen would have trouble getting more than 2.5 points out of 10 in a match with Stockfish, and that would probably mean 5 draws and 5 losses. GMs have no interest in playing computers public
247.
by dfan 12y ago
You should indeed study Stockfish's source, not because it is the strongest computer chess engine, but because it is exceedingly well-written. Most engines that are public are a big hacky mess, but the Stockfish maintainers have made c
248.
by dfan 12y ago
I hope so! I thought it was pretty interesting to look at the data backwards like this.
249.
by dfan 12y ago
Yeah, no one plays out to checkmate except for gross blunders or to entertain the crowd. Back in the 19th century it was more common to play things out to the bitter end. I bet you would find that frequency of checkmate is negatively correl
250.
by dfan 12y ago
Was that book with the Stonewall Attack "How to Think Ahead in Chess"? http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-Ahead-Chess-Techniques/dp/06... I don't think that the current popularity of 1.d4 is due to pla
251.
by dfan 12y ago
If you are a novice player, you really don't have to worry about this. Memorizing opening lines doesn't become an important part of the game until you are a very good tournament chess player. Until you are much better, it is far,
252.
by dfan 12y ago
The traditional way to handle this is by classifying a game according to the last cataloged position that occurs in it. This is how ECO classification works; you can see its catalog of positions at http://www.chessgames.com/
253.
by dfan 12y ago
The two biggest examples I can think of of "opening fell out of fashion but then was brought back at the highest levels" are Kasparov reviving the Scotch in the 1990s and Kramnik reviving the Berlin variation of the Ruy Lopez in h
254.
by dfan 12y ago
Unfortunately, it isn't always obvious from the data which of your interpretations is correct. Take the following two fictional cases: Case 1: The Limburger Gambit was popular for a few decades, but then grandmasters started playing th
255.
by dfan 12y ago
The Pirc spike in the 1850s looks interesting visually, but keep in mind that your data set back then is incredibly small. Looking at my own database, the spike seems to be entirely due to some guy name Mahescandra playing it 57 times again
256.
by dfan 12y ago
Indeed, one possible consequence of developing the queen early is that it can be harried with tempo by the opponent; that is, he gets to make you respond while making developing moves he wanted to make anyway. However, except in cases of gr
257.
by dfan 12y ago
Thanks. FIDE didn't implement ratings until 1970 anyway. (I'm not sure what the ratings you have for the 1960s actually are - perhaps USCF ratings.)
258.
by dfan 12y ago
cven714's point is correct; it's more for tournaments than for matches (where match refers to a series of games). Also note that even in a match, where players alternate colors, Black should be happy to draw and take White in the
259.
by dfan 12y ago
What I was wondering specifically was how the average rating varies by year. My hypothesis was that it has gone down over time as it has become easier for games between less skilled players to get into databases.
260.
by dfan 12y ago
By the way, I would be interested to see a graph of the average rating of the players by year, as well as what the other graphs look like when controlled for rating. I wouldn't be surprised if the explosion of the data set in recent ti
261.
by dfan 12y ago
This is all pretty standard knowledge in chess circles, but it's always nice to see someone taking an interest in analyzing chess stats. I was a bit thrown by the misuse of chess terminology, though. In chess, a "match" is a
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by dfan 12y ago
In the same sequence, Stephen Boyd's course Introduction to Linear Dynamical Systems ( http://see.stanford.edu/see/courseinfo.aspx?coll=17005383-19... ) is also excellent. The title sounds pretty specific but it is
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by dfan 12y ago
I almost stopped reading after the terrible stock images at the top.
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by dfan 12y ago
It feels to me like the author is trying hard not to offend his community and ending up a ways off the point. Knowing Jeff, it is hard for me to imagine that he is trying not to offend.
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by dfan 12y ago
Jessamyn is amazing at being empathetic when people have issues with the site, but being firm about the actual decision that have been made, without being patronizing (it's very hard to say "I totally understand your concern, but
266.
by dfan 12y ago
Funny, I was just having a real-life conversation in which I was saying that I prefer the Metafilter style and find it difficult to follow HN/Reddit threaded conversations because it's non-trivial to find updates and all the actio
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by dfan 12y ago
Make it six or seven.
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by dfan 12y ago
The best undergraduate mechanics textbook I've seen is Morin's, though it probably requires a certain kind of student (one who is not fazed by taking things up one level). Morin does a great job of showing how experts actually sol
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by dfan 12y ago
The real problem in that case is that every function declaration turned into 1 line of declaration, 2 lines of comments, 1 line of whitespace, and 2 lines of "comment whitespace". Blowing up the amount of vertical space that code
270.
by dfan 12y ago
Totally agreed with #1. I think it's easy to forget how deeply you need to get calculation and symbol manipulation into your fingers so you don't get stuck later on.

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