Monday, February 05, 2007

Kamen Rider for Computer Science

I just thought of a crazy idea. To begin, let us trace back to why it crossed my mind in the first place.

I liked Kamen Rider Black. It is a show "for kids" that people probably will say similar to Power Rangers. I think I can accept this in terms of casual public's thinking: action figure tie-ins, heroes fighting monsters with enough time to pose to the camera, etc. But as a fan, I disagree quite strongly. While there are excellent Power Ranger series (Ninja Storm and Space Patrol Delta come to mind), Kamen Rider series usually have a much darker background story, complete with conspiracy theory paranoia (and, of course, Kamen Riders no longer pose that much Edit: this is no longer true with "modern" Kamen Riders. They now pose as often, if not more often, than Power Rangers.).

Well, anyway, note the "Black" sub-title. It was rather long ago (long, long ago, 20th century--if you get the reference, heh). These days, Kamen Riders are getting weirder (and sometimes childish).
Take Kamen Rider 555 for example. A person needs to wear the belt (Kamen Rider trade mark equipment/morpher), dial "555" on a mobile phone, put the mobile onto the belt, and he transforms into Kamen Rider Faiz. Silly, huh? (But I love Faiz, the action sequences and gimmicks somehow got into me.)
Another recent example is Kamen Rider Blade. Of course the main Rider uses a sword.

Now, extrapolating, what if we were to design a Kamen Rider series to get kids into computer science? (As a part of our grand scheme to take over the world peacefully.) Kamen Rider EM came to my mind. EM stands for Expectation Maximization (Google it, there are a lot of tutorials out there). Well, one of the uses of EM algorithm is to estimate Gaussian mixture distribution, so probably we can represent each monster as points on high-dimensional space. The Rider will pose dramatically as he tried to estimate parameters needed to fit the monster's points. Once he can fit the points using a Gaussian distribution, that's when he delivers the final, destructive blow. A punch maybe. Or a kick. Gaussian Kick?
Then, as the series progresses, he will of course meet stronger monsters. Even ones he clearly cannot defeat. So he will need an upgrade. He needs a better mathematical model to defeat the monsters.

Well, a monster does not usually follow the same fighting pattern all the time. So, a better model is to assume that the monster assumes a certain fighting state at a point in time. Each fighting state can be modeled by a Gaussian mixture; while the change from one fighting state to another can be modeled by transition probabilities.
Kamen Rider EM evolves into Kamen Rider HMM. Now he has new weapons: Ergodic shield and, uhm, Left-to-right Sword.

Another Rider to accompany EM in the series can be other classes of computation. Instead of statistical powers, this Rider prefers deterministic powers. Kamen Rider Algo perhaps? Not sure yet how he fights and what weapons he has.

Some thoughts for another day when I re-visit algorithms perhaps.
(Yes, I got this crazy idea while re-reading about EM algorithms.)

And that's enough fantasy for one day.

(Edited on 5 March 2015)

1 comment:

  1. Heheheheheheh... that was fun fantasy. =D

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