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Subject: Re: Definition of branching factor?

Author: Larry Griffiths

Date: 09:47:18 02/01/01

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On January 31, 2001 at 11:18:56, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On January 31, 2001 at 03:29:12, Severi Salminen wrote:
>
>>>There are two terms that are intermixed often:
>>>
>>>1.  "branching factor" usually means the average number of branches from a
>>>node, which for chess averages 35-38 (depending on who you believe) for the
>>>whole game.
>>>2.  "effective branching factor" is roughly calculated as you mentioned.  IE
>>>nodes for iteration N-1 divided into nodes for iteration N.  Or you can use
>>>the time.
>>
>>Ok, now I know the terms. Case 2 is what I indeed meant.
>>
>>What equation do you use for EBF calculation. I just thought that maybe one
>>should not use the number of nodes in the equation I gave, but the number of
>>leaf nodes.
>>
>>root_moves*EBF^(DEPTH-1)=leaf_nodes (not total nodes, I think)
>>
>>In initial position you have
>>
>>20*20^(2-1)=400 which is the number of leaves in ply 2.
>>
>>Using this I have EBF (in Vincent's position) of 3.8. So I still have to improve
>>:)
>>
>>Severi
>
>
>Since nodes per second is fairly constant for a program, you can either
>use nodes(ply)/nodes(ply-1) or time(ply)/time(ply-1).  Those two numbers
>should be pretty similar.
>
>doing it for leaf positions should also result in fairly comparable numbers,
>although search extensions can affect this.  I would just use _all_ nodes
>to keep it simple and to remain compatible with what others quote.

Bob,

Severi gave me this formula earlier.

   ebf=pow(leaf_nodes/legal_root_moves, 1/(DEPTH-1));

Are you suggesting that it should be:

   ebf=pow(ALL_NODES/legal_root_moves, 1/(DEPTH-1));

Larry.




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