Dating Game architecture

Dating game architecture for the Heuristic Problem Solving course at NYU (Fall 2016)

Running

The architect.py file is the main entry point for starting the game. Execute the following in a shell to start it.

python architect.py <PORT-NO>

Change the variable ATTRIBUTES to inside architect.py file to change the number of attributes each candidate can have. The test scripts can be executed by

python test_person.py <PORT-NO>
python test_matchmaker.py <PORT-NO>

Sequence of actions

1. The architect communicates the number of attributs (n) to Person (P) via socket.
2. P responds with a vector w, of length n whose positive components sum to 1 and negative components sum to -1 and sends it to the architect who verifies it. P also sends 2 binary arrays indicating the ideal and anti-ideal candidate which are also verified.
3. The architect communicates n via socket to Matchmacker (M).
4. The architect computes the dot product of the s_i = (w.x_i) for 1 <= i <= 20 where x_i is a binary random vector. He sends all 20 s_i and x_i to M.
5. For 20 turns
6. M guesses some x, such that all components of x are between 0 and 1.
7. Architect computes s = w.x, and stores s. It then sends x to P.
8. P modifies w, while not deviating more than 20% from the initial value of w and changing only 5% of the weights.
9. Architect sends s to M and requests for a new x. The architect records the best score s, and if it was ever 1, it records the number of turns taken.

Communication

TCP/IP communication is not guaranteed to be atomic. To resolve this issue we have fixed the message length of every message over the socket, so that every read call is guaranteed to contain the entire message sent. We use , to seperate values and \n to denote end of a message.

Person (P)

1. At the start receives exactly 4 characters. The last character is \n and the first 3 characters are digits which denote n, the number of attributes. For example

056\n

2. The architect then expects a response containing exactly, 6n characters, denoting the initial set of weights. Each component of the weight vector should contain, a +/- sign, followed by one digit before the decimal and 2 digits after the decimal. If you are not using any digits, you should set them to 0. Components are separated by , and \n denotes the end of the message. For example, for n=5.

+0.20,+0.80,-0.68,-0.00,-0.32\n

You can use the dating/utils.py:floats_to_msg2 function to do so. 3. The atchitech then expects the ideal and anti-ideal candidates, with the ideal candidate expected first. Each candidate is exactly 2n characters of binary digits. For example

0,1,1,0,0\n

4. Subsequently the Person will receive 20 guesses made by Matchmaker over time, each of which will contain 8n characters. Each component will have a +/- sign, followed by one digit before the decimal and 4 digits after the decimal. For example

+0.2303,+0.8095,+0.1366,+0.9295,+0.4915\n

5. For each of the 20 candidate proposed by the matchmaker, the person has to reply with modified weights with 20% of the original weights from step 2 and only 5% of them changed. Once again, the weights should be communicated by exactly 6n characters.

Matchmaker (M)

1. Same as person, receives n, via exactly 4 characters.
2. Immediately after that, M receives 20 binary vectors along with their scores. Each (score, vector) tuple is exactly (2n + 8) characters long. The first 8 characters are the score, followed by a :, followed by a comma separated binary vector. For example

+0.9900:1,1,0,0,1\n

3. M is expected to give an estimate of weights during each of the 20 iterations. The architect expects a message of exactly 8n characters, where each component contains one digit before the decimal and 4 digits after the decimal. For example

+0.3038,+0.1525,+0.9334,+0.6368,+0.4921\n

See function dating/utils.py:floats_to_msg4 4. After sending an estimate, M will receive a score, of exactly 8 characters. For example

+0.1356\n

Submission Format

Compress all your files into a single zip archive called teamname.zip. Make sure it has 2 bash files teamname_player.sh and teamname_matchmaker.sh. Please load all your modules you need in your bash files. The bash files will be called as follows

bash teamname_player.sh <PORT-NO>
bash teamname_matchmaker.sh <PORT-NO>

Send all your submissions to vnb222@nyu.edu