100th Game!!!

<-- 100th game!

Yesterday the terminator played it's 100th game! This is an important date so here it is: May 6, 2009. So far the terminator has really improved. During games 76-100 the terminator won 1 game, lost 6,and tied 18. That means during those 25 games it won 4% lost 24% and tied 72%. Pretty big improvement huh? Keep checking in.

Answer To The Brain Teaser

Finally, the moment you have all been waiting for!
The answer to the Brain Teaser...

WAIT!!!

There is a catch! You have to find the answer on the blog...
It is hidden, it could be anywhere!

JUST JOKING!!!

Go to the comments on the post "Brain Teaser."
The answer is in there. You got so close Rory!
And who ever agreed with Rory got very close too!

Learning to Draw

Tic-Tac-Terminator is not yet winning, but its ability to play a game that results in a tie is clearly improving. Of the last 25 games played, 12 ended in a draw; and 11 of those draws occurred in the 18 most recent games.

It is becoming more apparent in some of the common openings that moves that previously led to a loss are dying out as T3 is penalized a bead for each loss and awarded a bead for each draw. Box pattern #30, for example, began with 10 beads: 2 of each color for its five possible moves. That same box currently has 9 beads, 6 of those are orange and that is the one move that blocks a certain loss on the next move.

However, it is also clear that T3 is not yet trained for obvious wins. Several times in recent games it played a successful strategy that gave it a fork with two X's on two different lines. When its human opponent blocked one line, T3 unfortunately failed to choose the alternative winning move. Had it selected the winning square, it would have been rewarded 3 beads of that color, increasing the likelihood that it would play for victory the next time. By ending in a draw instead, and getting awarded a single bead, it reduced slightly the probability it will make the winning move the next time.

It should be interesting to watch how long it takes Tic-Tac-Terminator to discover winning moves and to begin playing them with regularity.

The Terminator's Accomplishment

Yesterday the Terminator made a big accomplishment: its very first cross country tic tac toe game using the phone. The challenger was from Massachusetts. (Thanks, Uncle Tom.) Although it lost, this is a very big accomplishment for the Terminator.

<--The challenger.

Statistics

So far the Terminator is doing well. It's certainly learning. So far it has played 50 games. Each score sheet contains 25 games. For the first 25 games it won twice, had a draw once, and lost 22 times. For the next 25 games it won zero times, tied seven times, and lost only 18. Now for all you math wizards out there, tell us what percentage of wins, draws, and losses the Terminator had for each page. Feel free to post your answers as a comment. Keep checking in.

First Game!

After a lot of of hard work the Tic-Tac-Terminator played its first game. Sadly, it lost to Kevin. (Congratulations, Kevin!) But at least it got smarter in the process. After 11 games, the Tic-Tac-Terminator won only one. But it is on the road to success! Keep checking in to hear about different matches. Soon we hope to find out how to put videos on the blog!

Putting on the Finishing Touch

At last, Tic-Tac-Terminator (T3 as I like to think of her) is ready to go. Here Justin pastes the tic-tac-toe grid on the final matchbox. It represents T3's first move.

Since T3 always plays first (and always plays X), there are three possible unique opening moves: a corner, the center, or a center side position. A color dot appears on the grid in one instance of each of those positions. Four beads of each of those three colors are already inside the box. To begin, one shakes the box and selects a bead at random to mark T3's opening move.

Tic-Tac-Terminator is officially primed and ready to go. You can sense that Justin can practically hear her whispering her first move and challenging all comers to face the stark logic of her tic-tac-toe brain.

Stay tuned.

Answering Your Questions

Some of you may be wondering what this project is. Well I'm going to clear that up right now. Basically we are creating a computer type device that plays tic tac toe. How this works is we have 304 matchboxes. On each box there is one of the 304 tic tac toe combinations. We then fill each box with different color beads, each one representing a different move the computer could make. We then shake the matchbox and pull out a bead, but don't look so the color is random. We write down the move the color symbolizes in a tic tac toe grid and keep the bead on top of the matchbox. Then the person who is playing it takes their turn. This process is repeated until the game is over. Then we look at the matchboxes that have beads on top. For each win the computer gets we put three of the color beads on top in the matchbox, for each tie we put in one, and for each loss we take one away. What this does is practically increase the odds that the computer will pick a winning strategy. So basically the computer is learning with each game. Hopefully that cleared things up for most of you. If not, feel free to post a comment.

Our Tic-Tac-Toe Board

The picture on the left is the normal board. The board on the right is flipped over and turned so two blanks are before any X or O. This is our way of finding the right match box. It is helpful because we only had to use 304 match boxes instead of over 2,000.

Taking a Break

After this hard working day we went outside to take a break. And as you can tell by this picture we do not sit around and talk for a break. We are always doing something out of the ordinary! Here is Kevin blowing away the competition in our slam dunk contest! He is amazing!

One Step Closer

We are zipping through this project! We have just filled out all of the Tic-Tac-Termiator's unique moves. Rory came over to help us with the project again. You rock, Rory! Now that we have filled that out we are one step closer to finishing this project. Keep checking for new posts, we might do something crazy!

Brain Teaser

A father of triplets plans to surprise their mom by having all four of them meet her downtown for dinner. Unfortunately, when he goes to start his eleven-year-old van, he discovers that it has finally given up the ghost. Undeterred, he looks around the garage and discovers a tandem bicycle in fine working order. Alas, it can only safely transport him and one of the three boys at a time.

He realizes that if he leaves Kevin alone with Andrew while ferrying Justin, they will get into mischief with super glue and silly string. He also knows he cannot leave Andrew alone with Justin or they will make prank phone calls to India on the cell phone. Giving it a moment's thought he determines that he can get all four of them to dinner without any monkeyshines. How does he do it?

[This puzzle is for entertainment purposes only; any similarities to real triplets, naughty or obedient, is purely coincidental.]

Building the Board

We finished making the board. We couldn't have done it without the help of friends (thanks Rod). It turned out well and it should make transporting the matchboxes easier. We decided on 24 matchboxes by 13 matchboxes. It turned out really well and I think this project is really coming along.

The Great Bead Sort

The project that we are currently working on requires 3,500 beads of seven different colors. we bought the beads in an assorted variety. We then had to sort the beads into eight different piles (seven for each color and one for the colors we weren't using). There needed to be 500 beads for each color and they had to be small enough to fit 30 beads in each matchbox. A friend came over and helped us sort the beads (thanks Rory!). We still need around 1,000 beads but we are doing pretty well. All in all it was a successful day.

The Boys in Action

This was a successful first day beginning the Tic-Tac-Toe engine. We found the matchboxes, divided them up, and planned the layout. We even found a friend who agreed to help us build a board to hold the rows of matchboxes. (Thanks, Rod!)

We began creating the tic-tac-toe board permutations and have started puzzling out how to determine the machine moves efficiently.

Andrew named the engine (Tic-Tac-Terminator), Kevin created a score sheet in Excel, and Justin wrote out his 100 tic-tac-toe grids.

We even created this blog to document our progress and figured out how to take, upload, and post photos using the boys' digital camera. All in all, a terrific start to our first project.

Congratulations, boys!

(I also noted a great deal of enthusiasm regarding our second project when we figure out what to do with 10,000 leftover matches. Hmm, it seems we have several pyromaniacs on this team!)

Pictures

Here is a picture of some of the matchboxes. A lot of matches huh? Guess what? That's only 1/3 of the matchboxes!!! (click on the picture)

Working Hard

We are working very hard on this project. So far, so good! Now we have successfully emptied the match boxes. Now we have 10,000 matches! If you have an idea on what to do with all these matches, please inform us. And we now have a name for our new tic-tac-toe playing machine. One idea is "Tic-Tac-Terminator." If you have any other ideas for a name, add a comment. We might choose your name. We will post more ideas and photos later. Keep checking in to see what wacky thing we will do next!

P.S. This is only 1/3 of all the matches!

Our First Project

Our first project that we will be doing is building a matchbox computer. In order to do so we needed to buy 304 matcheboxes. That adds up to about 10,000 matches. The matches are not needed for the current project (only the boxes) and we are not quite sure what to do with all of those matches. Feel free to post ideas about what to do with them.

Confused?

Don't worry, we will be posting a lot about our project. We will include pictures and descibe our project in such detail that all of your questions about the matchbox computer will be answered.