Matthew Scroggs

Following Matthew Scroggs's talk on Stage C, we will be hosting a Q&A session in the Maths Village / Workshop 5 tent with Matthew and MENACE.

In the 1960s, Donald Michie built MENACE: the matchbox educable noughts and crosses engine. MENACE was built from 304 matchboxes and is one of the earliest examples of a machine learning algorithm: initially, MENACE is a very bad noughts and crosses but over a number of games it learns better ways to play. In this talk, I will demonstrate how MENACE and (simple) machine learning work using the copy of MENACE that I have built.

Drop into the Maths Village / Workshop 5 tent on Saturday evening to play a game of noughts and crosses against a pile of matchboxes. Over the course of the evening, the matchboxes will learn to play and (hopefully) start winning or drawing games. On Sunday at 18:00 on Stage C, Matthew Scroggs will be talking about how this matchbox-powered machine works and showing off some data gathered during this Drop In