A Simulation Study of Learning a Structure: Mike\u27s Bike Commuting

This paper undertakes a simulation study of a player’s learning about the structureof a game situation. In a simple 1-person example called Mike’s Bike Commuting,we simulate the process by which Mike experiences and accumulates memoriesabout the game structure. It is the basic requirement that to keep an experienceas a long-term memory, Mike needs enough repetitions of that experience. By thechoice of our simple and casual example, we can discuss relevant time spans forlearning. In particular, we argue that the limit case of Mike’s learning as timetends to infinity is of little relevance to the problem of learning. We find also thatthe concept of “marking” introduced by Kaneko-Kline is important for obtainingsufficient structural knowledge in a reasonable time span. The simulation studyshows that Mike’s learning can change drastically with the concept. We also considerMike learning his preferences from his experiences, where we will meet variousnew conceptual problems