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Subject: Re: I just don't get this ...

Author: George Tsavdaris

Date: 02:57:37 01/04/04

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On January 04, 2004 at 00:42:02, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On January 03, 2004 at 20:53:39, Rick Rice wrote:
>
>>Person A posts a message saying Ruffian 2.0 is very dissapointing, with the
>>results to back it up. This is followed by a second post which basically says
>>that Ruffian 2.0 rocks with some results to back it up. Are these programs
>>really so time and hardware sensitive, so as to show varying results on
>>different CPUs/time controls?
>>
>>Ideal solution would be for SSDF to have one massive board with one CPU and
>>memory for each program (equal CPU and mem for all the progs on its list) and
>>some way to automate the play of these programs against each other..... on
>>different time controls such as regular, blitz etc. Just wishful thinking for
>>the future, but it would eliminate the multiple and varying results.
>>
>>Cheers,
>>Rick
>
>
>
>Statistics are extremely important in chess, and in computer chess.
>
>Unfortunately, even after years of talks about the subject, almost nobody on
>this message forum understands that you really need A LOT OF GAMES to start to
>have an impression of a probability about which program is stronger.
>
>The variations you have noticed do not come from different setups.
>
>These variations are statistical variations. That means that most of the match
>results posted here are statistically MEANINGLESS.

It would be better, if you first define when something is statistically
meaningless.

>
>People love to proudly post the result of the 20 games match they have run
>overnight. They don't even care to know if that result has any meaning. Well in
>most of the cases the result means nothing (just a waste of electric power) and
>you should not care about it at all.

 Always the result mean something. If someone play a match with parameters AA
between engine X and Y, Z number of games, then we are able to conclude some
things.
 For example that X is stronger than Y with a probability k % (0<k<100)
when these two play with AA parameters.

 You say "most of the cases the result means nothing", so with that, you believe
that there are some cases(parameters AA,games Z) that the result means
something.
 And that for all other parameters AA, games Z the results are meaninless.
Why? Who can define the right parameters AA, number of games Z? Perhaps the god?

>
>
>    Christophe



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