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Subject: Re: rebel 10~!! super strong on amd k62 500

Author: Mogens Larsen

Date: 14:10:18 07/28/00

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On July 28, 2000 at 16:23:27, Ratko V Tomic wrote:

>Of course, this isn't meant to mean that the conventional rating is useless. My
>original point is that the folks ridiculing a human player's judgment after a
>few games as worthless are missaplying, out of ignorance ands/or malice,  the
>uselessness of a simple-minded statistical modeling (such as the memoryless
>steady process) to the strengths of human modelling of the situations with high
>uncertainty (such as a very small sample of games).

We don't disagree on the usefulness of human evaluation on a very small sample
of games. However, the statistical model doesn't give absolute values, only
estimate and uncertainty. Coincidentally, the same applies to human evaluation.

The assumption that a huamn player, however capable, can estimate within a broad
margin of error the strength of a program with very little data, is not correct.
To make stable evaluations, you need stable performance. Human players do that
most of the time, computer programs don't, mixing blunders and brilliancies
regardless of strength. So evaluation based on a single game is, as you say,
simple-minded.

The defence of human intrepretation isn't wrong. It's just not relevant to the
case at hand, since the precision of empirical evaluation is based on a large
sample of games. Small samples are not interesting for estimation. They're
random from a statistical point of view and from a human estimation point of
view.

Best wishes...
Mogens



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