Learning Efficient Classification Procedures and Their Application to Chess End Games

Abstract

A series of experiments dealing with the discovery of efficient classification procedures from large numbers of examples is described, with a case study from the chess end game king-rook versus king-knight. After an outline of the inductive inference machinery used, the paper reports on trials leading to correct and very fast attribute-based rules for the relations lost 2-ply and lost 3-ply. On another tack, a model of the performance of an idealized induction system is developed and its somewhat surprising predictions compared with observed results. The paper ends with a description of preliminary work on the automatic specification of relevant attributes.