Book Image

Python Reinforcement Learning Projects

By : Sean Saito, Yang Wenzhuo, Rajalingappaa Shanmugamani
Book Image

Python Reinforcement Learning Projects

By: Sean Saito, Yang Wenzhuo, Rajalingappaa Shanmugamani

Overview of this book

Reinforcement learning is one of the most exciting and rapidly growing fields in machine learning. This is due to the many novel algorithms developed and incredible results published in recent years. In this book, you will learn about the core concepts of RL including Q-learning, policy gradients, Monte Carlo processes, and several deep reinforcement learning algorithms. As you make your way through the book, you'll work on projects with datasets of various modalities including image, text, and video. You will gain experience in several domains, including gaming, image processing, and physical simulations. You'll explore technologies such as TensorFlow and OpenAI Gym to implement deep learning reinforcement learning algorithms that also predict stock prices, generate natural language, and even build other neural networks. By the end of this book, you will have hands-on experience with eight reinforcement learning projects, each addressing different topics and/or algorithms. We hope these practical exercises will provide you with better intuition and insight about the field of reinforcement learning and how to apply its algorithms to various problems in real life.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Contributors
Preface
Index

A brief introduction to Go


Go is a board game that was first recorded in China two millennia ago. Similar to other common board games, such as chess, shogi, and Othello, Go involves two players alternately placing black and white stones on a 19x19 board with the objective of capturing as much territory as possible by surrounding a larger total area of the board. One can capture their opponent's pieces by surrounding the opponent's pieces with their own pieces. Captured stones are removed from the board, thereby creating a void in which the opponent can no longer place stones unless the territory is captured back.

A game ends when both players refuse to place a stone or either player resigns. Upon the termination of a game, the winner is decided by counting each player's territory and the number of captured stones.

Go and other board games

Researchers have already created AI programs that outperform the best human players in board games such as chess and backgammon. In 1992, researchers from...