NobbyCapeTown wrote:
The correct answer is the square root of 4
The positive square root of four, if you please.
Do you think chess and mathematics are related?
Sort:
Smyslov Fan: So are you putting, for instance, positional play into the mathematics category, or are you more referring to algorithms that computers use to play?
SmyslovFan wrote:
Let me try it this way:
One of the earliest applications computers were taught was how to play chess. Chess can be expressed and understood entirely by mathematics. Can mathematics also be artistic? Yes, one only needs to think of some of collections of fractals and mandelbrot sets to see the beauty of mathematics.
Chess is a form of mathematics.
If computers playing chess shows chess is related to mathematics, then when I surf the web I'm also doing a math related task. How silly.
I think Smyslov needs some more Fancy Feast.
waffllemaster wrote:
If computers playing chess shows chess is related to mathematics, then when I surf the web I'm also doing a math related task. How silly.
if that was written in the 19th century, it would have meant something.
Computers in the 19th century being people? What would have "surfing the web" meant then?
What's with all the cats?
didn't nostradamus tell everyone ?
about the impending invasion of blonde cats from space ?
Not that I dislike cats, just allergic is all.
that's a subtle denial of your dislike! while you go to sleep tonight, imagine 80 cats looking in through your windows, 50 cats in your wardrobes, fridge, on the tv, under the bed etc. imagine them telling you how cool you are ..
should be cured by morning if you live
Well you're right it would only take about 24 hours for the problem to disappear. (I'd be dead heh).
"...we've never had a mathematician attack chess and say, well, what are the mathematical principles buttressing the game?" GM Maurice Ashley, Chess Life, 2012.
If [chess] shows this change in executive functioning, then it's huge because it will be U.S. goverment approved, and that's a big list to be on - that kind of a program - because a lot of schools choose whatever curriculum they use based on that list." GM Maurice Ashley, Chess Life, 2012.
Maurice Ashley held a summer camp in Baltimore that inaugurated a new long-term study about the effect of chess on cognitve skills. He has funding from a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.
He has a team including a neuroscientists and psychologists, and is working on a chess/math curriculum for schools.
I don't know what executive functioning is. Do you?
Update: I read Wiki's definition, and it sounds like executive functioning is a particular theory on how our brains manage all of the cognitive processes.
Anyway, I find it exciting that chess could one day become part of a student's core curriculum in some way, and not just a club that meets after school or during lunch.
Chess and Executive Functions
GM Ashley’s chess training techniques are now being used in a grant-funded research (Institute of Education Sciences, Department of Education) project based in a large urban school district in the South East United States involving a collaboration between Dr. Michelle Ellefson at Cambridge University, Dr. Serpell of Virginia State University, and Dr. Teresa Parr from Ashley-Parr, LLC. Learn more…
http://mauriceashley.wordpress.com/projects/
Nov 24, 2012
0
#173
Two important points here:
1. It looks like the similarities of logic functions that operate in both math and chess are being conflated to the point where things that are similar are transformed by a kind of lazy intellectual slight of hand into things that are the same.
2. Cats represent a threat to my vital security interests!
Enough people believe in the myth that Ashley got that grant money (cha-ching!)
And as much as I'd personally enjoy seeing chess mandatory in school (heh) I don't think it would improve education one bit. Better to make physics or creative writing or something like that mandatory.
On mandatory classes: I think they basically just annoy students, and nothing more 
. When I had to take art, it didn't make me like art, it just annoyed me while I was there. I didn't put an effort in it of course, but people forcing me to pretend I was didn't make me like it any more.
Ok, I'm only semi-serious here, as obviously we need some mandatory classes. I think a mandatory chess class is redundant when we have mandatory math and science; like in the case of my art, it'll be hard to make people appreciate a subject they just naturally hate, meanwhile the guys who already like math and stuff don't need a chess course to reinforce that.
Oh, I totally forgot about art.
Yeah, replace art with chess, no problem. (I don't see art helping at all either).
Nov 24, 2012
0
#177
I think we should put mandatory subject like "how to live properly for the future"
kco wrote:
I think we should put mandatory subject like "how to live properly for the future"
They could have Emmet Brown teach it.
No way ! Checkers is mathematics. Chess is poetry!! Chess is seduction!! Chess is friendship !!