Math Is Fun Forum

I've noticed that some sections of the site are really inactive e.g. Coder's Corner, Science HQ, and Math(s) Teaching Resources.

I've seen some posts that say ARB did some things such as copyright violation, spamming, etc. that got him banned. But who was he?

I am wondering how you would write if statements, as shown below in Python, in an equation.

a = 1+2
b = 2+1
if a == b:
    print('1+2=2+1')
elif not a == b:
    print('1+2 does not equal 2+1 and this will never be printed')
else:
    print('This will never be printed just like the above')

Does anyone know how to do this (maybe with the sign function)?

I registered with the username pi³ but now I want to change it to pi_cubed since the cubed symbol is hard to type on some devices. Do the admins have the ability to do this? If not, then no worries.

Hexapawn is a 3x3 variant of chess which was designed by Martin Gardner. Each side has 3 pawns.

Martin Gardner included with the directions how to make a matchbox computer that will learn to play a perfect game. The basic algorithm is:

1. Play a game with a human using the steps below:
       a. The human plays a move and takes the matchbox that has his move printed on it.
       b. There will be several beads in the box. The human will take a random bead and move the pawn according
       to the corresponding move.
       c. Repeat with the matchboxes that corresponds to every move
            -If the computer wins then put the beads back in the box
            -If the computer loses then take the beads out.
2. Keep repeating this, and after some time, the computer will be able to play a perfect game.

The theory behind this is that the computer will "learn" to play a perfect game by eliminating all the possibilities that lead to a loss. This algorithm would not work for things like categorizing images or identifying human faces, but it did work for AlphaZero and AlphaGo, which learned to play the complex games of chess and go by just playing games against itself and learning from its mistakes.