I haven't done much python this year, but had a great time at Europython and the London dojo. As I speak, a couple of days using jython for websphere automation awaits...<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 21 December 2010 12:22, Matthew Turnbull <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mattcturnbull@googlemail.com">mattcturnbull@googlemail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;">For a while now I've been interested in sports / games 'ratings'<br>
systems. Some years back I collected results from weekly football<br>
games and wanted a way to score individual players from team score<br>
results (the teams change each week) - ultimately I wanted to help<br>
pick balanced teams). This year I set up a company table tennis ladder<br>
on <a href="http://racquetladder.com" target="_blank">racquetladder.com</a> but was desperately unhappy with the ranking<br>
system - the winner / loser simply switch (or stick) ranks, which is<br>
terribly unstable (although very transparent). So I made a python /<br>
numpy implementation of Rémi Coulom's 'Whole History Rating'<br>
algorithm, and experimented a little with creating 'interactive' SVG<br>
plots of the results.<br>
<br>
Then I took part in the Planetwars "Google" AI challenge, and chose to<br>
use Python, thinking it would be dominated by clever heuristics rather<br>
than brute calculation. Top UK Python entry (*bow*) but, sadly, other<br>
languages dominated. Interestingly, they used Coulom's 'Bayeselo' to<br>
rate the entries, about which there was much griping, but nobody could<br>
think of a better way to do it -- I think generally people<br>
underestimated just how powerful Bayeselo is, and besides, those<br>
people were all over on <a href="http://kaggle.com" target="_blank">kaggle.com</a> where they concurrently had a<br>
'design a better Elo' competition! So, for me it was an interestingly<br>
coincidental year.<br>
<br>
Oh, I also went to a London Dojo -- it was a lot of fun and I hope to<br>
go again. I don't really have any projects on the go at the moment so<br>
2011 is a blank slate. Definitely want to win the next ai challenge :)<br>
<br>
Nice to have a chance to talk about these things.<br>
Matt<br>
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