I came across this cool interactive feature in the New York Times: RPS Simulator. Basically you play rock, paper, scissors against an algorithm that has learned how to play an optimal game based on prior data. The trick is that humans try to think about the game, versus playing truly randomly. If you play a truly random game you should be able to at least tie the computer. To generate random numbers I moved my mouse around with my eyes closed and guessed my move based on the mouse location. Alternatively you could use the seconds hand on a clock and modulo the number by three.

For my machine learning class this week we have to write this algorithm given a training data set. I will post the code after the homework submission deadline.