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Subject: Re: Chess Programmers -- take note: M. N. J. van Kervinck's Master's Thesis

Author: Tony Werten

Date: 08:41:18 08/20/02

Go up one level in this thread


On August 20, 2002 at 11:24:52, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote:

>On August 20, 2002 at 11:03:10, Sune Fischer wrote:
>
>>>It's by far one of the most complete accounts of whats needed in the
>>>actual implementation of a program, it contains several new ideas,
>>>describes some known ones that weren't formally described before and
>>>it's written in a very understandable way.
>>
>>*) It says 2002 loud and clear, don't know where you get your data from.
>
>I asked.
>
>>*) I don't see any new ideas.
>
>I do.
>
>>*) The fact that it is readable to the average laymen is not a requirement of a
>>thesis.
>
>But increases it's value greatly.
>
>>And I find it very insulting to give a masters degree on the basis of such >junk, some of us actually work hard for that degree you know.
>
>This is very common. A Masters was awarded to Andy Van De Putte
>by the RUG, for Mat(h). It was a Java chess program that did not contain
>any new idea (contrary to 'blik'), and was weak and buggy. The promotor
>(Veerle Fack) did not understand even the very basics of alphabeta.
>
>Compared to this, Marcel is a genius. The level in most computer science
>departments that deal with AI is of a completely laughable level.

This is the point I was making to start with.

One, or actually 2 more points.

The computerscience department of Eindhoven already made this mistake with a
thesis about computerchess back in 88. (accepting old stuff )

The supervisor of this paper is from the "architectural design" department. (
Bouwkunde ).
His knowledge about AI is "If you put all the knowledge of all architects in a
computerprogram, you have a computerprogram that can design buildings".
When I tried to explain the complexity of this and some basic minimaxing I got a
confused look and a "You should write a thesis about that"

Tony

>
>I don't like this situation either. I did physics. Most of the computer
>chess papers would have provoked a 'is this a joke' question from my
>professors. Yet, all those people are getting masters degrees.
>
>I find it amazing that you are attacking Marcel, when his work wasn't
>really that bad. I *wish* there were more 'bad' publications like this.
>
>>>Maybe I should throw a stack of ICCA journals at you, to learn
>>>to relativate.
>>
>>Or maybe you should be a little more objective and less emotional.
>
>I think that if you read through a few ICCA journals, you would
>realize that I was being far more objective than you might think.
>
>The level of most publications there is far below this thesis.
>
>--
>GCP



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