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credits.html
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<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="default.css" type="text/css">
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<title>Acknowledgements: TrueSkill Server</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>TrueSkill Server Acknowledgements</h1>
<p>[<a href="/">Home</a>] [<a href="help.html">Help</a>]</p>
<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueSkill">TrueSkill</a> is a <a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian">Bayesian</a> ranking algorithm
developed by <a href="http://research.microsoft.com/">Microsoft Research</a>
and used in the <a href="http://www.xbox.com/live">Xbox Live</a> ranking and
matchmaking service. The algorithm is patented and trademarked by Microsoft.</p>
<p>Microsoft provided two TrueSkill rank calculators on-line but sdly no more
(i.e. these links are broken legacy links):</p>
<ul>
<li><a
href="http://boson.research.microsoft.com/trueskill/rankcalculator.aspx">A
form based version</a></li>
<li><a
href="http://boson.research.microsoft.com/trueskillranking/rankcalculator.aspx">An
AJAX based version</a></li>
</ul>
<p>Both seemed more complicated than was needed, didn't support more than 8 players
and were not apparently intended to provide a server for TrueSkill updates so
much as demonstrating the algorithm and providing a benchmark for comparison
against if re-implementing.</p>
<p>This TrueSkill Server was written by Bernd Wechner, with an aim of being as
simple and lightweight as possible, while versatile and able to serve all of
TrueSkill's features out to client applications and users for an unbounded
number of players and/or teams, and to provide an interface that does not
depend upon team definitions (that is, supports individual play, as is far more
common in board gaming culture).</p>
<p>This server owes much thanks to:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.moserware.com/2010/03/computing-your-skill.html">Jeff
Moser</a> and his excellent implementation of TrueSkill in C# .NET (which
was ultimately not used for this server)</li>
<li><a href="http://trueskill.org/">Heungsub Lee</a> and his excellent Python
implementation of TrueSkill (which is used for this server) and personal
support in implementing the server.</li>
<li>Ralf Herbrich for his enduring patience in helping us to understand TrueSkill
better and providing some guidelines for tuned values of the tuning parameneter ß
in particular.</li>
<li>Tom Minka for his patience and guidance as well in the understanding of
TrueSkill</li>
</ul>
<p>This TrueSkill Server is written in Python using the Bottle web framework
(in under 300 lines) with the form written in HTML with JavaScript driving the
dynamic layout (less than 400 lines of JavaScript and 200 lines of HTML) with
one small style sheet (under 200 lines) and two support files, one for help and
another for acknowledgements.</p>
<p>It should run fine on any web server that supports Python, poses very light
resource loading and keeps a log of all requests it serves.</p>
<h2>Disclaimers</h2>
<p>
The <a href="help.html">help</a> and interpretation of TrueSkill parameters is
by no means certified by Microsoft Research. It is the best
understanding that I have after reading the Microsoft Research papers,
Jeff Moser's papers and discussing with Heungsub Lee
</p>
<p>
The server does not guarantee accurate TrueSkill results and thorough testing and
comparison with Microsoft's raters (cited above) is worthwhile but not (yet)
conducted.
</p>
<p>
Microsoft Research has improved TrueSkill and published
<a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/trueskill-2-improved-bayesian-skill-rating-system/">
TrueSkill 2</a>. But until someone codes that up in <a href="https://www.python.org/">Python</a>
we're unable to offer it here (hint, hint @Heungsub Lee or others).
</p>
<p></p>
</body>
</html>