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Ah, yes, Markov chains. A long time agoMark V. Shaney https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney was designed by Rob Pike and posted on Usenet.

And Veritasium's video "The Strange Math That Predicts (Almost) Anything" talks in detail about the history of Markov chains: https://youtu.be/KZeIEiBrT_w

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Going way back, I believe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racter (1984) used Markov chains. The book "The Policeman's Beard is Half-Constructed" is hilarious, but as noted it was co-written by the author.

It's a great explainer. Definitely better than mine.

fwiw, your explanation really made markov chains click for me (unlike other markov chain explanations) i have to admit, that the part where you went from the idea over hashmaps to the matrix representation was a bit dense, but rereading it twice made me under it so thanks for your explanation!

That's great to hear. Thanks! I'm glad it worked.

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