AlphaGo
Go originated in China over 3, 000 years ago. Winning this board game requires multiple layers of strategic thinking. Two players, using either white or black stones, take turns (place) their stones on a board. The goal is to surround and capture their opponent's stones or strategically create spaces of territory. all possible moves have been played, both the stones on the board and the empty points are counted. The highest number wins.
As simple as the rules seem, Go is profoundly complex. There are an astonishing 10 to the power of 170 possible board configurations--more than the number of atoms in the known universe. This makes the game of Go a googol times (complex) than chess.
AlphaGo, a computer program combines advanced search tree with deep neural networks, thus came into being. These neural networks take a description of the Go board as an input and process it through a number of different network layers (contain) millions of neuron-like connections.
neural network, the " policy network", selects the next move to play. The other neural network, the" value network", predicts the winner of the game. AlphaGo (introduce) to numerous amateur games to help it develop an understanding of reasonable human play. Then we had it (play) against different versions of itself thousands of times, each time learning from its mistakes.
Over time, AlphaGo improved and became increasingly stronger and better at learning and decision-making. This process is known reinforcement learning. AlphaGo went on to defeat Go world champions in different global arenas and arguably became the greatest Go player of all time.
As part of my research, I collected every digitized number one New York Times bestseller from 1960 to 2014 and ran the Flesch-Kincaid test * on 563 of them. Most books meant for a general audience will fall within the fourth- to eleventh-grade range, as did all of these bestsellers. If you look at the scores over the decades, an unmistakable trend becomes clear: The bestseller list is full of much simpler fiction today than it was 40 or 50 years ago. In the 1960s, the median (中间的) book had a grade level of 8. Today the median grade level is 6.
On the upper end, James Michener's 1988 novel Alaska had a grade-level score of 11.1. Of the books I analyzed, 25 had a grade level of 9 or higher. But just two of these were written after 2000.
On the low end, eight books tied for the lowest score of 4. 4. All were written after 2000 by one of three high-volume writers: James Patterson, Janet Evanovich, and Nora Roberts.
There's no way around it: While prize-winning literary novels such as Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections make the number one spot on occasion, overall, the books we're reading have become simpler. Does that mean that books—and therefore their readers--—are getting "dumber" too?
It is true that today's bestsellers have much shorter sentences than the bestsellers of the past, a drop from a median of 17 words per sentence in the 1960s to 12 in the 2000s. Also, today's list is much more often topped by commercial novels than in the past.
It would be easy to associate the New York Times list of reading-level decline with the rise of arguments that the country's intellect is at an all-time low, but I don't think this is fair.
Writing doesn't need to be complicated to be considered powerful or literary. The winner of the2014 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, The Goldfinch, was also a bestseller and has a reading level of 7. 2. While many classics have high scores (The Age of Innocence at 10. 4, Oliver Twist at 10. 1, The Satanic Verses at 10. 1), just as many have surprisingly low scores: To Kill a Mockingbird at 5. 9, The Sun Also Rises at 4. 2, and The Grapes of Wrath at 4. 1. These books are highly respected, but they are also accessible enough to be taught in middle and high school.
It's logical that our bestselling books are not complex—by definition, popular means they appeal to the masses. For what it's worth, plenty of successful "literary" writers have welcomed the beauty of "easy" writing.
As one bestselling writer put it, "One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. "His name: Jack Kerouac. By the way, Kerouac's most popular book, On the Road, scores a reading level of 6. 6.
*The following is the formula of the Flesch-Kincaid test and the resulting score is the grade level required to understand the text.
A. But if you would like to have any kind of concrete sense of how much you've read, then the digital book is frustrating. B. Therefore, many people now question whether digital books will alter, or maybe have already altered, the way we read. C. Some like old books while others prefer the latest releases. D. So, instead of wondering whether printed books are dead, perhaps we should ask; can were ally live without them? E. They can't furnish your home with a record of what has passed through your mind. F. Digital books are excellent for what is known as "recreational reading". |
Are Printed Books Fated to Die?
Nowadays, the sales of printed books have decreased in almost all markets across the world, while on the contrary, the sales of digital books have soared.
Are printed books dead? No! It isn't true at all. Reading has always been extremely personal. There is no end to the range of preferences, and in many ways the digital revolution has added one more choice to the readers.
Of course, we can't deny that digital books have obvious advantages. In other words, if you feel a strong urge to read War and Peace on your way to work, you would be wise to carry it in its slim digital version. And with the improvement of digital books, you can now mark your favourite quotes easily, and search for occurrences of words or phrases in a way you would never do with a printed book.
Knowing what percentage of the book you have read is not the same. It is an essential component of reading that one should be able to see around the corner.
There is, after all, one more thing that digital books can't do. Many people have found that it isn't enough to only read digital books. With printed copies on their bookcase, they say, they are able to have the possibility of remembering in future how they felt when they read those books.
Are Zoos a Good Thing?
Zoos are hugely popular attractions for adults and children alike. But are they actually a good thing?
Critics of zoos would argue that animals often suffer physically and mentally by being enclosed. Even the best artificial environments can't come close to matching the space, diversity, and freedom that animals have in their natural habitats. This deprivation causes many zoo animals to become stressed or mentally ill. Capturing animals in the wild also causes much suffering by splitting up families. Some zoos make animals behave unnaturally: for example, marine parks often force dolphins and whales to perform tricks. These mammals may die decades earlier than their wild relatives, and some even try to commit suicide.
On the other hand, by bringing people and animals together, zoos have the potential to educate the public about conservation issues and inspire people to protect animals and their habitats. Some zoos provide a safe environment for animals which have been mistreated in circuses, or pets which have been abandoned. Zoos also carry out important research into subjects like animal behaviour and how to treat illnesses.
One of the most important modern functions of zoos is supporting international breeding programmes, particularly for endangered species. In the wild, some of the rarest species have difficulty in finding mates and breeding, and they might also be threatened by poachers, loss of their habitat and predators. A good zoo will enable these species to live and breed in a secure environment. In addition, as numbers of some wild species drop, there is an increased danger of populations becoming too genetically similar. Breeding programmes provide a safeguard; zoo-bred animals can be released into the wild to increase genetic diversity.
However, opponents of zoos say that the vast majority of captive breeding programmes do not release animals back into the wild. Unwanted animals are sold not only to other zoos but also to circuses or hunting ranches in the US or South Africa, where some people are willing to pay a lot of money for the chance to kill an animal in a fenced enclosure.
So, are zoos good for animals or not? Perhaps it all depends on how well individual zoos are managed, and the benefits of zoos can surely outweigh their harmful effects. However, it is understandable that many people believe imprisoning animals for any reason is simply wrong.