Bill Spight wrote:I think that there are two different senses of influence that are in common use. One is a translation of seiryoku or gaisei, which could also be translated as power or outside strength.
Ambiguous translations from the past do not help us. Maybe what was being meant is the influence created by a group of thick(ness) stones?
The second sense comes from computer go (as far as I know), and means the effect that a stone or group of stones has on empty points or stones.
This does not come from computer go. CG tried some extraordinarily rough influence map models, but you might as well have guessed values of influence. The "second" (I say: only) sense of influence, which can also be considered rather independently of the cause (the thickness etc.), as the property of empty (or not empty) intersections could be seen on a level of intuitive usage in various books. It was ambiguous though with no precise values because nobody could define it, until I did last year.
This kind of influence could even be negative.
Rather every connection or life degree of influence can be also negative. (Whether territory becomes negative depends on how territory is inserted in the influence definition. E.g., by convention white territory could be expressed by negative numbers.)
Very few people really understand the second kind,
There is no reason not to understand influence now: Just refer to my definition. What can remain difficult though is practical application of the exact degrees at each intersection. Such is often not necessary though. It suffices to understand roughly which intersections are, e.g., 0- or 1-connected.
Which is one reason that current computer programs have pretty well abandoned it.
Thomas Wolf thinks that my definition now provides a different reason: It requires too much calculation power. Therefore for computers he suggests some static approximation; it is in one of his papers. Oh, didn't you proofread that one? I dislike such rough approximations though because one can never really be sure whether the values are calculated well or badly.
Takagawa says that there are two kinds of walls, those that need an extension, and those that do not. That classification is fuzzy
Rather it is very rough. Instead n-connection and m-life values provide precise degrees.
P. S. There is a good chance that I will give a presentation of my research into influence of the second kind at the U. S. Go Congress this summer
Oh. Why reinvent the wheel? Simply apply my existing definition! (I knew you'd better read my book. :) ) Or is your research about application of influence?
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