The Maths of Board Games - Sarah Hart
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 15 ต.ค. 2023
- Why are there chess Grandmasters, but not Grandmasters of noughts and crosses (otherwise known as tic-tac-toe)? It is because chess is “harder” - but what do we really mean by that?
Answering that question leads us to develop the idea of mathematical complexity, which is a measure of how ‘big’ a game is.
We’ll look at the complexity of popular games, and ask: what is the hardest game of all time?
This lecture was recorded by Sarah Hart on 10 October 2023 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London
Sarah is Gresham Professor of Geometry.
She is also Professor Emerita of Mathematics at Birkbeck, University of London.
www.gresham.ac.uk/speakers/pr...
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/m...
Gresham College has offered free public lectures for over 400 years, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. There are currently over 2,500 lectures free to access. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn from some of the greatest minds. To support Gresham's mission, please consider making a donation: gresham.ac.uk/support/
Website: gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: / greshamcollege
Facebook: / greshamcollege
Instagram: / greshamcollege
"It's an easy game, you'll soon pick it up. Shall we play for one gold piece to add interest?"
"By all the Gods, but you're a lucky player! Shall we double the stakes?"
If there weren't hustlers in Ur who made a handy living out of the Royal Game, I'll eat my hat. They wouldn't even have needed to cheat.
Hey Mike - sorry to trace you here but are you having some of your posts deleted over on the, erm... music review channel? Seem to remember you having mentioned it and it's happened to me a little bit. Just curious?
@@ConradWalsh Hi Conrad - no worries, thanks for getting in touch. If you're a fan of Andy&Jon, you're OK by me. Yes, I have had. You've suffered too? On Italo-Disco? I suspect I'm on some sort of automated greylist, under which if I post any live link I get zapped, despite my hatred of processed ham products. My workaround is to post either a search string or a YT ID.
More related to this video, I recently did some research on "The Old Army Game", which turned out to be "Chuck-a-Luck". The banker in that "fair dice game" turns out to have an edge of - wait for it - 8%.
@@mikesummers-smith4091 Hi Mike - I have responded to this post (ending ".....wait for it - 8%")
and it's been deleted.
I'm giving up
Great Lecture. Enjoyed that. As a long-time gamer and wargamer, I never had the heart or will to play North Africa but I did play "The Longest Day" a close second over the period of 9 months with 4 players. I currently play Star War X-Wing by AMG, which is easy to learn, and difficult to master, like Chess. Why Hexes on a board games, most military boardgames use hexes, the move distance to the next hex is always the same, with a square a move diagonally, would move further. My favourite non-dice game is Diplomacy, over 70 years old, much has been written about it, even the odd Thesis or two.
for those wondering why she doesn't talk about Go, she does. at 48min mark 😅
Its slightly easier to explain the Go rules if you say the score is the number of stones remaining at the end+ territory surrounded. Its how they play it in China, and its basically strategically equivalent to the rule given here.
finally one to share with my son! nice work gresham
That was great! I read an article in the New Scientist in the 70's which explored the idea that although Chess might be within the reach of brute force number crunching by computers of the future, Go was was way beyond that because as you explain the game space. But also identified that as an interesting problem to attack, which would also need to look at how human minds work compared to computers. Interesting to see how human ingenuity has over the decades helped machines along with the problem. Methods seem to be ones which weren't obvious to everyone then. Fascinating.
well done, fascinating
This is why monopoly is a terrible game
I would have yawned SO HARD half-way through..
I think that arrow goes around the wrong way in Ur.
What a great presentation with such knowledge and passion. And stamina!!
Sure some games are solo. But it's a point of human psychology and maybe animals too, that games are mostly adversarial. They are training for combat, competition, dominance.
They normalize it and instill winning into kids (or maybe it's inherent...?), and while many require problem solving, rarely include COLLABORATION.
It's stark and weird considering it's for entertainment...
Wrong. There are collaboration games. And even competitive games can be played collaboratively.
1. A race with points based on how close the contestants are at the finish line.
2. Drinking games.
@@cavramau smarta$$, count them. Then count all the rest.
I agree with you about the psychology of games. Although there are some positive attributes to playing games. They can also tend to frame the world in zero sum terms.
@@jonr6680 oh OK, I see you Jimmy.
32:00 chocolate game.(or invert the strategy, w laxitive dog chocolate) _JC
❤❤❤💖💖💖💖amazing 😀🤘🏼
*DO ROULETTE!* i have a system. _JC
board games,, amazing
Kriegsspiel
Gresham is still in black month judging by the thumbnail. But some common sense remains- maths not math.
47:00 theoretical v praxis solved. _JC
math: is thr anything is cant ruin? _JC
We like to use our brains... For leisure. M'kay. Would not fit that demographic, working week was enough thanks. Plus adversarial games likewise.
Which is why TH-cam was invented.