What's up in
games
Latest Articles
The Surprisingly Simple Math Behind Puzzling Matchups
If Anna beats Benji in a game and Benji beats Carl, will Anna beat Carl?
Math’s ‘Game of Life’ Reveals Long-Sought Repeating Patterns
John Conway’s Game of Life, a famous cellular automaton, has been found to have periodic patterns of every possible length.
AI System Beats Chess Puzzles With ‘Artificial Brainstorming’
By bringing together disparate approaches, machines can reach a new level of creative problem-solving.
Machines Learn Better if We Teach Them the Basics
A wave of research improves reinforcement learning algorithms by pre-training them as if they were human.
The Computer Scientist Who Finds Life Lessons in Games
In Shang-Hua Teng’s work, theoretical and practical questions have long been intertwined. Now he’s turning his focus to the impractical.
Mathematicians Roll Dice and Get Rock-Paper-Scissors
Mathematicians have uncovered a surprising wealth of rock-paper-scissors-like patterns in randomly chosen dice.
How the Slowest Computer Programs Illuminate Math’s Fundamental Limits
The goal of the “busy beaver” game is to find the longest-running computer program. Its pursuit has surprising connections to some of the most profound questions and concepts in mathematics.
Playing Hide-and-Seek, Machines Invent New Tools
After millions of games, machine learning algorithms found creative solutions and unexpected new strategies that could transfer to the real world.
A Life in Games
The mathematician John Horton Conway’s myriad accomplishments — including the Game of Life, sprouts and the surreal numbers — are the product of a mind at play.