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Subject: Re: Test Suites and program improvements -- many questions for the experts:

Author: leonid

Date: 12:13:34 08/19/00

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On August 18, 2000 at 18:03:28, Dann Corbit wrote:

>There has been some discussion about the use of test suites and their usefulness
>for program improvements.  Personally, I plan to use them extensively to fiddle
>with "bean-counter" in order to try to get things right.
>
>Since there are so many variations that are possible with hundreds of
>parameters, I was planning to use gradient search error minimizations with the
>evaluation function to try and find an optimal value for all the parameters that
>solves a test set of perhaps 5000 carefully verified positions.  (Iteration
>would be so expensive it would be impossible to use it).  The experiment would
>be repeated at different time controls, as perhaps some parameters are also a
>function of time!
>
>Now, I am wondering (since at least one of the world's best chess programmers
>does not use them at all) if it is such a good idea.  So, I am wondering, if you
>do not use test positions to tune your evaluation parameters, how on earth do
>you choose suitable values for each positional, tactical, and material
>parameter?  What are the alternatives?  Why are the alternatives better?  If
>test positions were used in the past and abandoned, what prompted the change of
>heart?  If test positions have *never* been tried, how is it known that they
>won't be useful?

In chess program 100% verifiable part is move generator and mate solver. The
rest is never clean from occasional evil. Few funny bugs can stay in this part
year around.

Leonid.



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