From cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Fri May 30 18:38:34 1997 Return-Path: cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Received: from oolong.camellia.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by oolong.camellia.org (8.6.12/8.6.12) with SMTP id SAA23400; Fri, 30 May 1997 18:38:33 -0400 Precedence: bulk Errors-To: cube-lovers-errors@oolong.camellia.org Message-ID: <338F3C40.6EEC@ibm.net> Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 13:44:48 -0700 From: Jin "Time Traveler" Kim Organization: The Fourth Dimension X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: cube-lovers@ai.mit.edu Subject: Re: The rest of us References: <338F18FB.22DC@snowcrest.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Joe McGarity wrote: > > I hope that I am not alone in that much of Prof. Korf's description is a > little over my head. Perhaps the Professor or others can recomend books > on AI or group theory to those of us whose education only goes as far as > trigonometry. This is a very interesting subject and I find myself > wanting to understand it better. Is there anything out there aimed at > the beginner? If so I would very much like to see it. Prof. Korf's solution to the Cube sounds like it basically maps all possible iterations within a given number of steps. Once you know all the possible combinations given the maximum number of turns, you can then just compare a scrambled cube to the map and see if it falls within one of the available templates. And of course, the more moves you calculate out to, the longer it's going to take due to the geometrically increasing number of possible movements. Yes, the solution, as the good Professor explains it, is definately over my head, but I think I know how he is going about solving it. Brute force. Of course, the DETAILS of how it's done are over my head as well. Ultimately I think the cube is more satisfying if I solve it myself, even if it takes me 3 minutes and dozens of twists. -- Jin "Time Traveler" Kim chrono@ibm.net VGL Costa Mesa