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Subject: Re:Test sets in chess, the same story

Author: Peter Fendrich

Date: 15:17:03 04/19/98

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I think you missed my point...
These kind of questions always comes down to philosophy or even
religion.
And hopefully not mainly to political or statistical issues.

Let's stop the philosophy and slide over to computer chess. Now we are
in the middle of two subjects that I really like!

There are numerous test sets for chess programs.
Suppose we want to measure how strong a chess program is just by
doing a test with 150 positions. (About the same number positions as
questions in the IQ test.)

You probably agree with me that no current test is reliable and will
never be.
It's impossible to cover all aspects of strength in chess just by 150
positions, furthermore it's very hard to compose the positions so that
different aspects have the exact weight in accordance to the other
aspects of chess strength.

Of cource we will find a correlation between strong programs and good
performance in the test but we can never rely on the test for each
individual chess program. Exactly as for the IQ test.

Stength in chess is just a minature of intelligence which is far more
complex so the same should apply to IQ test but worse. My opinion in a
nutshell...

But if you still want a test set for chess programs, a good way to
design it is to do it the same way as as the IQ tests are made.
Mathematically not bad really! Has anyone tried this?

I still wont believe in these tests but if someone does the job anyway,
why not doing it right!

Peter








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