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Subject: Re: Extensions?!

Author: Don Dailey

Date: 16:13:10 01/13/98

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On January 13, 1998 at 16:53:46, Bruce Moreland wrote:

>
>On January 13, 1998 at 15:49:58, Don Dailey wrote:
>
>>>This is not perfect.  I should probably normalize the numbers somehow so
>>>that problems in which both of the programs finish very close to the
>>>maximum allowable times don't get more weight than those in which
>>>neither of them can quite finish that last ply.  Also, this doesn't take
>>>into account that one of the versions might be getting closer to the
>>>real answer, and therefore is taking more time per ply.  And finally, I
>>>have had a problem with disk caching -- the second run on any given
>>>night usually goes faster than the first one, so when I run these
>>>suites, some of the results are a little bogus.
>>
>>All of this stuff is a mess.  I don't think the way problem sets are
>>typically scored make much sense.   They should give credit for quicker
>>solutions in my opinion not just total solved in less than x minutes.
>
>I'll try again.  My first response to this was chopped off due to lag.
>
>This is not how I am using this.  I am not checking times to solution,
>at all.  I am comparing time to finish the last ply that both versions
>finished.
>
>If version A finishes 8 plies in a position, and version B finishes 9, I
>compare the times taken to finish 8 plies.
>
>If version A and version B don't differ very much, and you use a suite
>that is large enough, and positional enough, this can tell you which is
>faster.
>
>I would mainly do this if I am trying to figure out if a performance
>change really increased performance.
>
>Some people try to figure out if they have gotten faster by looking at
>nodes per second, which is wrong, because doing more nodes says nothing
>about whether you've also decreased efficiency.
>
>If I add a new extension, I will still collect this information, because
>I think it is interesting to know what effect my extension has had upon
>overall search depth.  A version that takes twice as long, on average,
>to get to depth D, might be a little suspect unless it is somehow
>solving *everything* faster.
>
>But I think that testing like thisis especially useful when you are
>trying to figure out if you have improved move ordering, or have made a
>significant performance change somehow.
>
>bruce


Hi Bruce,

I do pretty much the same thing but I'm speaking in more general terms
of better ways to score problem sets to compare with others.  I'm
basically "fishing" for a better way, I probably won't change the way
I do my own testing because it works well for me.

- Don








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