Author: Ratko V Tomic
Date: 11:04:31 07/28/00
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> Someone else will observe something different > and so the story goes. It can be used in conjunction > with empirical data, but it can't stand alone. The ratings and the personal strength judgment are both models for predicting the outcome of the future games. For a small number of games the judgment of a knowlegable human player is clearly better predictor. The rating as a predictive model amounts to no more than essentially saying -- the results so far were A:B, so I predict that they will most likely remain A:B. That is really the most simple minded kind of prediction one can make about anything. Imagine such kind of predictor applied to 5 coin tosses, where 4 came out heads, 1 tail. A human would predict that on 1000 tosses the most likely otcome would be 500:500, while the rating would predict 800:200. If I were to bet who will come closer on 1000 tosses here, I would pick human every time. A human observer uses additional information to make much better prediction (such as observation and knowledge of the degree of motoric control a person tossing the coin could have). For chess the difference from the coin tossing example is magnified manifold since the quantity of the extra knowledge (beyond the mere game result) a good player can apply to the analysis of a single or a few games is vastly greater.
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