Learning to Play

Learning to Play
Author: Aske Plaat
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2020-12-23
Genre: Computers
ISBN: 3030592383

In this textbook the author takes as inspiration recent breakthroughs in game playing to explain how and why deep reinforcement learning works. In particular he shows why two-person games of tactics and strategy fascinate scientists, programmers, and game enthusiasts and unite them in a common goal: to create artificial intelligence (AI). After an introduction to the core concepts, environment, and communities of intelligence and games, the book is organized into chapters on reinforcement learning, heuristic planning, adaptive sampling, function approximation, and self-play. The author takes a hands-on approach throughout, with Python code examples and exercises that help the reader understand how AI learns to play. He also supports the main text with detailed pointers to online machine learning frameworks, technical details for AlphaGo, notes on how to play and program Go and chess, and a comprehensive bibliography. The content is class-tested and suitable for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on artificial intelligence and games. It's also appropriate for self-study by professionals engaged with applications of machine learning and with games development. Finally it's valuable for any reader engaged with the philosophical implications of artificial and general intelligence, games represent a modern Turing test of the power and limitations of AI.

The Librarian's Almanaq

The Librarian's Almanaq
Author: Roy Leban
Publisher:
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2015-03-31
Genre:
ISBN: 9780996256803

The Librarian's Almanaq is the culmination of Literally centuries Of tremendous work by a dedicated team Of researchers who just couldn't Keep it under wraps. Here, you'll get the advice you need to be successful in the World and learn the sine qua non of puzzledom. Never before has a wealth of Information like This been gathered in one place, let alone a single volume. Your Hunger for sacred knowledge can finally be sated! Examine the Almanaq carefully and make sure to read the Instructions, and you can turn onto a New path toward enlightenment. [The Librarian's Almanaq is an all-in-one puzzlehunt, an interconnected suite of a dozen unique and fun puzzles, culminating in a satisfying conclusion, and all put together in a form you've never seen before. Solving time is 8-40 hours for 1 person; proportionally less for groups. You will need a large table or floor space to work on, plus a pen or pencil, scissors, and transparent tape to solve the puzzles. A highlighter, felt-tip marker, and a live duck would be handy.]

The Conjurer's Almanaq

The Conjurer's Almanaq
Author: Roy Leban
Publisher:
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2019-01-21
Genre:
ISBN: 9780996256810

The Conjurer's Almanaq is the ultimate guide to the conjuring arts. Or is it? Start reading and you'll be trapped inside! This unique puzzle book is an escape room in a book, only there is no room. You're trapped in the book itself by an evil spell cast by The Great Qdini. Find the hidden puzzles and learn Qdini's true name to make your way out

Atlas at War

Atlas at War
Author: Michael Vassallo
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2020-06-17
Genre: Comics & Graphic Novels
ISBN: 1682475298

Atlas at War! collects fifty hard-hitting stories from Atlas Comics, the company that became Marvel Comics and published more war titles than anyone in the industry between the years 1951 and 1960. Comics historian Dr. Michael J. Vassallo has chosen the best of the best, many of which are coming back into print for the first time, from sixteen different Atlas war titles and featuring the artwork of twenty different artists--giants of the genre, including Russ Heath, John Severin, Bernie Krigstein, Joe Maneely, Jerry Robinson, Steve Ditko, and Jack Kirby. Each page has been meticulously restored from its first printing by comic art restorer Allan Harvey. Atlas at War! covers the brutal pre-code period where graphic depictions of war action were rendered by artists who were World War II veterans themselves, as well as the post-code period, where code restrictions forced creators to tell stories without graphic violence but produced some of the most beautiful comic art of the genre. In addition to the artists, stories cover all aspects of war--from famous campaigns, weaponry, and personal soldier stories to political topics, Nazi atrocities, and even one story tinged with pre-code horror! Often overlooked in favor of its competitors, Atlas at War! will finally show that Atlas' war titles were second to no one.

The Hearts of Horses

The Hearts of Horses
Author: Molly Gloss
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2007
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780618799909

With an elegant sweetness and a pitch-perfect sense of western life reminiscent of Annie Dillard, Glosss breakout novel is a remarkable story about the connections between people and animals and how they touch one another in the most unexpected and profound ways.

Arthur and Sherlock

Arthur and Sherlock
Author: Michael Sims
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2017-01-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1632860384

2018 Edgar Award Nominee Shortlisted for the H. R. F. Keating Award from the International Crime Writers Association From Michael Sims, the acclaimed author of The Story of Charlotte's Web, the rich, true tale tracing the young Arthur Conan Doyle's creation of Sherlock Holmes and the modern detective story. As a young medical student, Arthur Conan Doyle studied in Edinburgh under the vigilant eye of a diagnostic genius, Dr. Joseph Bell. Doyle often observed Bell identifying a patient's occupation, hometown, and ailments from the smallest details of dress, gait, and speech. Although Doyle was training to be a surgeon, he was meanwhile cultivating essential knowledge that would feed his literary dreams and help him develop the most iconic detective in fiction. Michael Sims traces the circuitous development of Conan Doyle as the father of the modern mystery, from his early days in Edinburgh surrounded by poverty and violence, through his escape to University (where he gained terrifying firsthand knowledge of poisons), leading to his own medical practice in 1882. Five hardworking years later--after Doyle's only modest success in both medicine and literature--Sherlock Holmes emerged in A Study in Scarlet. Sims deftly shows Holmes to be a product of Doyle's varied adventures in his personal and professional life, as well as built out of the traditions of Edgar Allan Poe, Émile Gaboriau, Wilkie Collins, and Charles Dickens--not just a skillful translator of clues, but a veritable superhero of the mind in the tradition of Doyle's esteemed teacher. Filled with details that will surprise even the most knowledgeable Sherlockian, Arthur and Sherlock is a literary genesis story for detective fans everywhere.

Original Sudoku

Original Sudoku
Author: Editors of Nikoli Publishing
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2005-10-10
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 9780761142157

Prepare to be obsessed. Match wits with the experts who created Sudoku. Arranged from “Easy” to “Very Hard,” here are over 300 logic puzzles that celebrate the compulsive joy of Sudoku with symmetry, smartness, and elegance—qualities lacking in computer-generated puzzles. It’s fiendish fun…every puzzle is designed by an author who anticipates your next step and obscurest the path, while never leading you into frustration.

Cautiously Optimistic

Cautiously Optimistic
Author: Peter Funt
Publisher:
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2013-04
Genre: Candid camera (Television program)
ISBN: 9780615797014

How is the American spirit holding up in these difficult times? Peter Funt, syndicated columnist and host of TV's "Candid Camera," looks beyond the headlines to find out. In six-dozen essays, Funt uses a light but penetrating touch to take the nation's temperature. "I've always been fascinated by small slices of life," he writes. "During my time in broadcast and print journalism, as well as in entertainment television, I've looked for the smaller items that, when taken together, create a bigger picture of who we are and where we're headed." Funt's columns appear regularly in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, and many of his op-eds formed the basis for these essays. Funt's canvas is very much like the real world we deal with every day. Sure, Americans are concerned about taxes, education and crime. But we also care about mobile apps that talk back to us, Paul McCartney's hairdo, and raccoons that destroy our lawns. "On 'Candid Camera, ' Funt explains, "we celebrated the American spirit, and in the last five years of traveling, interviewing and researching, I'm happy to report that the spirit remains strong. That said, my opinion pieces often focus on the negative. That's inherent in news and commentary; we don't dismiss all the good, but we search out those things that need to be fixed." In "Cautiously Optimistic," Peter Funt finds the good, the bad and the occasionally hilarious. These essays are designed to make you think, but also to smile.

Monster Mash

Monster Mash
Author: David Catrow
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre: Children's songs, English
ISBN: 9780545214797

The "Monster Mash" was a graveyard smash--and now it's a picture book by David Catrow The "Monster Mash" gets Wolf Man, zombies, and other monsters to dance and party in this catchy, classic song. Dracula rises out of his coffin, vampires feast in the master bedroom, and the ghouls get a jolt from Boris's electrodes. This "graveyard smash" caught on in a flash, and it became the hit of the land. The song, written in 1962 by Bobby "Boris" Pickett and Lenny Capizzi, has gone on to sell over 4 million copies. Fifty years later, David Catrow takes it to new heights as a picture book, with his fun and wacky illustrations that are sure to get kids singing and "mashing" along.