Backus Naur Form

Hoa T. Le November 2, 2013

Contents
1 Introduction 2 Research Problem 3 Sentence outline 1 2 2

Introduction

Context-free grammars are of fundamental importance for programming languages. However, in the specication of programming languages usually a form dierent to the one provided in our Denition of context-free grammars is used. This form is the so-called Backus normal form or Backus-Naur form. BNF is an acronym for Backus Naur Form. John Backus and Peter Naur introduced for the rst time a formal notation to describe the syntax of a given language (This was for the description of the ALGOL 60 programming language, see [Naur 60]). To be precise, most of BNF was introduced by Backus in a report presented at an earlier UNESCO conference on ALGOL 58. Few read the report, but when Peter Naur read it he was surprised at some of the dierences he found between his and Backuss interpretation of ALGOL 58. He decided that for the successor to ALGOL, all participants of the rst design had come to recognize some weaknesses, should be given in a similar form so that all participants should be aware of what they were agreeing to. He made a few modiciations that are almost universally used and drew up on his own the 1

BNF for ALGOL 60 at the meeting where it was designed. Depending on how you attribute presenting it to the world, it was either by Backus in 59 or Naur in 60. (For more details on this period of programming languages history, see the introduction to Backuss Turing award article in Communications of the ACM, Vol. 21, No. 8, august 1978. This note was suggested by William B. Clodius from Los Alamos Natl. Lab).

Research Problem
1. How do you design an AI engine that will improve over time to give a more engaging game? 2. How do you implement the AI engine on a mobile phone? 3. What type of game based on consumer prole has the widest age range? 4. How does one write a tness function to constitute a good play from the AI?

Sentence outline
1. The growth of the mobile gaming market oers considerable potential for the deployment of engaging and compelling games constructed using AI components and techniques. (a) The digital media consultancy, Machines That Go Ping [?] suggest that the growth in mobile gaming is largely due to improved hardware, particularly screen displays. (b) In a survey reported in [?] 20% of respondents stated that the games available on a platform aected their mobile phone selection. (c) Gaming is the fourth most popular activity people use their phones for, behind voice calls, texting and taking photographs. That beats music, video, TVonly 5.8% of all UK adults have purchased a mobile game for their phone, but 19% of 16-24 year olds have purchased games for their handset. [?]

(d) mobile gamers are more likely to replace their handset twice a year or more, spend 25% more on hardware and are willing to pay 75% more for mobile games. The report also found that mobile gamers are signicantly more likely than other gamers to use their cell phones for non-gaming tasks such as downloading content and Internet access.[?] (e) 78% of mobile game players are under 25, as note on-line gaming is no longer the preserve of adolescent boys, but appeals to both genders and increasingly to a wider age range. The emerging consumer prole of the mobile gamer is of a young adult, having a few minutes spare and wanting to play something simple, but engaging.[?] 2. The GENETIC ALGORITHM is a model of machine learning which derives its behavior from a metaphor of some of the mechanisms of EVOLUTION in nature. (a) Genetic algorithms are intrinsically parallel. Most other algorithms are serial and can only explore the solution space to a problem in one direction at a time, and if the solution they discover turns out to be suboptimal, there is nothing to do but abandon all work previously completed and start over. However, since GAs have multiple ospring, they can explore the solution space in multiple directions at once. If one path turns out to be a dead end, they can easily eliminate it and continue work on more promising avenues, giving them a greater chance each run of nding the optimal solution.[?] (b) One of the most novel and compelling demonstrations of the power of genetic algorithms was presented by Chellapilla and Fogel 2001, who used a GA to evolve neural networks that could play the game of checkers. [?] 3. Java 2 Micro Edition (J2ME) is a form of the Java language that is optimized for small devices such as mobile phones and PDAs. (a) J2ME is limited by comparison to desktop Java, but it vastly improves the ability of mobile phones to support games. It allows far better control over interface than either SMS or WAP, allows 3

sprite animation, and can connect over the air network to a remote server.[?] (b) Because of its capabilities and the widespread and growing deployment of Java-enabled phones, it is a natural for mobile game development today[?]