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Unicycling pallbearers at his funeral
Alzheimer's slowly wore down the last decade of his life, and he ended up in full-time care. Before he died, he laid out how his funeral should go, an occasion that called for humor. The man who had spent years on the scientific study of juggling and kept a fleet of customized unicycles wanted a parade.
A clarinet player would lead, with a jazz combo behind. Next would come six unicycling pallbearers, somehow balancing the coffin, followed by the grieving widow. Then a juggling octet would march past, and after it a juggling machine.
Three black chess pieces would carry $100 bills. Three rich men from the west, California tech investors, would follow the money, marching in front of a chess float. On top of the float, British chess master David Levy would play a live match against a computer. Scientists and mathematicians would come next, and a 417-instrument band would bring up the rear.
How did Shannon turn juggling into math?
Shannon worked out a juggling theorem that ties together the number of balls, the number of hands, and the timing of each throw. It says the flight time of a ball plus the time it rests in a hand, multiplied by the number of hands, equals the time a hand sits empty plus the same rest time, multiplied by the number of balls. He also built a juggling machine that bounced balls off a drum. Many of his juggling machines and gadgets are now held by the MIT Museum.
Why did Shannon care about computer chess?
In 1950 he published 'Programming a Computer for Playing Chess' in the Philosophical Magazine. It proposed scoring each position with an evaluation function and searching a few moves ahead, which is the basis of later chess programs. He estimated the number of possible chess games at about 10 to the 120th power, a figure now called the Shannon number. Chess appealed to him as a test because the rules and the goal are clear, yet no machine could settle it by brute force.
How did David Levy fare against computers?
In 1968 Levy, a Scottish international master, bet several computer scientists that no program would beat him within ten years. He won the bet in 1978, taking a six-game match against the program Chess 4.7 even though the computer won one game. Programs improved quickly through the 1980s. In 1989 Levy lost all four games of a match to the machine Deep Thought.
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