Is it possible to card count a blackjack computer?
The header picture is a five dollar blackjack machine in Las Vegas (at the Palazzo), and a very good game it is too. I spent quite a few hours playing it (basic strategy). I did see another version of the machine – at Monte Carlo and Mirage, and I actually prefer those machines as they seemed […]
My First Java Project
It’s been a while since I decided to use Java as my new programming language of choice. Since my last post I have been honing my Java skills, with my first java project. I had a project I needed to do that is about analyzing academic papers, comparing them in various ways, sorting them, writing […]
Crowdfunding: A new model to fund research?
A few weeks ago I came across something called crowdfunding. I have known about crowdsourcing for a while, but crowdfunding had escapsed me. I am not sure it is a good idea but I thought I would try it out (see my project here, it develops my project for football prediction or, for more general […]
Free online access to Journal of the Operational Research Society in April 2013
Please don’t miss the opportunity to access Palgrave Macmillan journals free of charge during April 2013. I specifically mention the Journal of the Operational Research Society, as I am an Associate Editor of this journal. The official announcement is as follows: From April 1-30, 2013 Palgrave Macmillan is offering FREE online access to all its […]
New Blog Theme
I am impressed with WordPress. It tends to do what it says on the tin and the range of plugins and themes you can get enable you to add almost any sort of functionality. Yesterday I decided to bite the bullet and install another theme. Actually, installing a theme is very easy. It really is […]
Random Number Generation
We all know that computer generated random numbers are not really random at all, but just pseudo-random. And I know that is a lot of discussion about how best to generate random numbers. To be honest, I have not taken much notice of this in all the programming that I have done but today I […]
Hyper-heuristics: An Ongoing Research Idea
For the past few months a colleague and I have been putting a day aside every six weeks or so to work on a joint project. This is the first time I have programmed with somebody but its working out well. We each take responsibility for a C++ class and then plug everything together at […]
MISTA Conference: Plenary Talk (Raymond Kwan)
Our second plenary talk took place this morning. Raymond Kwan, from The University of Leeds, gave a talk entitled “Case Studies of Successful Train Crew Scheduling.”The talk was based on his spin out company (TrainTRACS) that markets software to UK train operators across the UK and is used to schedule train crews. As well as […]
Football Scheduling: News Story
The English football season has just started and, to coincide with the kick off, the Communications Office at The University of Nottingham offered to issue a press release about my work is this area. This resulted in an interview on BBC Radio Nottingham (broadcast 8th Aug 2009) and a colleague, from another university, sending me […]
Bin Packing Made Easier?
I have always found the following example interesting. I remember that it was Peter Ross who first showed me this during a presentation at a conferenec we were both attending. The example demonstrates that an algorithm can act in an unexpected way when you make a very small change to the input data. The example […]