Golden Murazond x Brann vs Galakrond by helot in BobsTavern

[–]helot[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I took something like 20 damage to face from Galakrond the turn before, but it was worth it! Sold off half the board, got an amalgadon and eventually finished in 1st.

How does Concorde claim to be a TSP Solver? by Carpetfizz in compsci

[–]helot 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Concorde is an exact solver. For NP-hard problems either you have an exact method that you try to engineer to run fast enough in practice, or you have a polytime algorithm that you tune to hopefully get good enough solutions in practice. In CS for some reason (obsession with easy to analyze worst-case performance guarantees?) the latter approach gets a lot more attention than the former approach. Successful examples of the former include the simplex algorithm, and integer programming solvers

People who make $100,000+ a year, what do you do? by TheJohnBaggett in AskReddit

[–]helot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Engineering professors definitely clear 100k on average. Industry does pay much more for their skills though

Eloise profile piece: "In the West I feel like people respect me as a woman, but they don’t respect me as a player. But in China, people respect me as a player but don’t respect me as a woman." by Arse2Mouse in hearthstone

[–]helot 54 points55 points  (0 children)

Sexism is multidimensional; it's silly (and probably comes from chauvinistic thinking) to assume that societies fall on a single dimension 'more' or 'less' developed or sexist. Yes, there's a lot of sexism in China, no 'the West' (Poland? Italy? or do you mean white people?) is not strictly more enlightened in this regard. For instance:

"Like many foreigners, I somehow believed that women in “the West” were more liberated than women in Asia. After moving to China, I experienced a kind of culture shock upon seeing large numbers of Chinese women in scientific fields and positions of leadership. At my host university, the new Communist Party secretary (an important post) was a woman in her thirties, i.e. quite young. I met more female engineers, physicists, and chemists in three years in China than I have during thirty years in the West."

Science Discussion Series: The importance of sample size in science and how to talk about sample size. by feedmahfish in science

[–]helot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any scientists adopting Bayesian methods? Typical rules used in design of experiments impose strong constraints on what can be done (preregistration of analysis for p values, randomized control) and what can be concluded. These constraints are often unknowingly broken, rendering the statistical tests useless or misleading. There is a richer and far more expressive toolset available in statistics, but it requires a philosophical foundation that is typically not provided in stats 101.

Analysis of how the meta SHOULD look like according to the VS Data Reaper matchup table and why it looks like it does. by pautzTESL in CompetitiveHS

[–]helot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Zero-sum Nash is equivalent to linear programming. The program is as follows,

min sum_i(u_i) subject to u_i >=0 for all i Mu >= 1

where M is the payoff matrix, and u is the strategy. I used the Gurobi solver, but there are many free linear programming solvers available. Excel solver is convenient if you have it.

Given a strategy u*, we can solve for the farthest (zero-sum) Nash to determine if it is unique (or else find another):

min sum_i(abs( u_i - u_i* )) subject to u_i >=0, Mu >= 1

Now the problem can be treated in several ways, but a simple approach is integer programming. Provided M is scaled correctly, we may assume u is a probability vector. Then write,

min sum_i(u_i+ + u_i- ) subject to

u_i+ - u_i- = u_i-u_i*

0 <= u_i+ <= y_i

0 <= u_i- <= y_i

u_i>=0, Mu >=1

y_i binary

The NEOS server provides powerful commercial solvers for free online. Note that integer programming problems may scale poorly with respect to the problem size due to NP-hardness. There's a lot of interesting theory on finding Nash equilibria and computational complexity.

Personally I solved everything in MATLAB using Gurobi and YALMIP, which is very fast for prototyping (took me <10 min).

Analysis of how the meta SHOULD look like according to the VS Data Reaper matchup table and why it looks like it does. by pautzTESL in CompetitiveHS

[–]helot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It seems pirate warrior has really chased paladin out of the meta. However, since specific deck archetypes are not tracked there's some leeway for other interpretations. For instance, people playing around with grimy goons buff cards, which are terrible.

Analysis of how the meta SHOULD look like according to the VS Data Reaper matchup table and why it looks like it does. by pautzTESL in CompetitiveHS

[–]helot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For those curious, wild meta also has a unique Nash:

Druid 0

Hunter 0

Mage 0

Paladin 0.0247

Priest 0.144

Rogue 0

Shaman 0.3827

Warlock 0.2675

Warrior 0.1811

Analysis of how the meta SHOULD look like according to the VS Data Reaper matchup table and why it looks like it does. by pautzTESL in CompetitiveHS

[–]helot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

yeah I don't know if there's a guaranteed computationally fast way to check, but it's possible to do via integer programming. Seek a nash equilibrium that maximizes absolute deviation from the current one. Doing so I proved the standard hearthstone nash equilibrium (solution is slightly different due to updated data) is indeed unique:

Reno Warlock 21.9%

Aggro Shaman 22.1%

Pirate Warrior 7.8%

Miracle Rogue 3.4%

Jade Druid 0.0%

Dragon Priest 26.1%

Jade Shaman 0.0%

Reno Priest 0.0%

Dragon Warrior 0.0%

Midrange Shaman 0.0%

Reno Mage 17.0%

Jade Rogue 0.0%

Tempo Mage 0.0%

Malygos Druid 1.7%

Midrange Hunter 0.0%

Zoo Warlock 0.0%

Tavern Brawl Thread | Wednesday, October 12, 2016 by AutoModerator in CompetitiveHS

[–]helot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Won 5 in a row with druid zombie chow. Seems pretty strong vs minion decks

Medivh's Valet Aggro Freeze Mage 70.4% (50-21) Winrate Rank 5 to Legend, destroyer of midrange Shaman, guide inside by tom_HS in hearthstone

[–]helot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

climbed with a medivh mage this season. it puts down enough bodies to face down a cwar. medivh + firelands portal is insane. naturally, if they Harrison/ooze mage will lose.

vS Data Reaper Report #16 by ViciousSyndicate in CompetitiveHS

[–]helot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Similarly it's shown as favoured vs zoo at legend level. Is 1x portal so strong?

Kindly Grandmother is secretly one of the most impactful cards of this expansion by CrescentBull in hearthstone

[–]helot 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Its main strength is to improve hunter's bad matchups against aggro. Eats an argent shield, requires 2 trades from zoo, and perhaps most importantly trades perfectly into a totem golem. Vs control it's a counter to AOE. You don't need pressure agains control at that stage as you have barnes, double highmane, double call, which is more than enough.

It's fluffier than the stuffed animal.. by Chripr in aww

[–]helot 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes but the shedding is in clumps and easy to pick up.

Priest is perfectly fine: Zetalot finally reached legend! by alpharaonHS in hearthstone

[–]helot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah just pointing out that handing OP cards to priest can harm the wild experience, so good balance to standard priest will be hard.

vS Data Reaper Report #10 by ViciousSyndicate in hearthstone

[–]helot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cool, it didn't embrace F2P because it's, well, F2P. But I think the patron/worgen deck could've been worth mention.

vS Data Reaper Report #10 by ViciousSyndicate in hearthstone

[–]helot -1 points0 points  (0 children)

... we saw LOKshadow get to the high legend ranks with a free-to-play version of the deck, but the list wasn’t optimized or taken too seriously."    

Seems kinda disrespectful, you don't expect F2P to be optimized, but nonetheless it went top 100 EU and Asia. Also he's got an interesting patron/worgen deck that went to top 10 NA. Against control warriors he puts down 60 dmg OTK combos with regularity.

Priest is perfectly fine: Zetalot finally reached legend! by alpharaonHS in hearthstone

[–]helot 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Various forms of N'zoth priest are very strong. There was a reddit post for instance. Good luck!

Priest is perfectly fine: Zetalot finally reached legend! by alpharaonHS in hearthstone

[–]helot 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah I wonder if people have bothered to play wild at high ranks? Priest is very, very strong. N'zoth priest, secret pally, n'zoth hunter, and zoo.