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Subject: Re: I'm wrong about 10-0 vs 60-40

Author: Andrew Dados

Date: 12:02:34 02/02/01

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On February 02, 2001 at 13:29:01, Uri Blass wrote:

>On February 02, 2001 at 10:47:38, Andrew Dados wrote:
>
>>On February 02, 2001 at 06:59:06, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>On February 02, 2001 at 02:55:44, Andrew Dados wrote:
>>>
>>>>On February 01, 2001 at 10:21:43, Uri Blass wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On February 01, 2001 at 07:39:11, Leen Ammeraal wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On January 31, 2001 at 20:17:17, Bruce Moreland wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I expressed very forcefully that a 10-0 result was more valid than a 60-40
>>>>>>>result.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I've done some experimental tests and it appears that I'm wrong.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I have no idea why.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>bruce
>>>>>>
>>>>>>According to the little Windows app Whoisbetter by Steve Maugham,
>>>>>>the certainty of being better for the winner is
>>>>>>97% with the score 60 - 40, and
>>>>>>99% with the score  7 -  0
>>>>>
>>>>>It is clearly wrong.
>>>>>The probablities that you talk about are not the probability that the winner is
>>>>>better.
>>>>>
>>>>>We cannot know the probability that the winner is better unless we have more
>>>>>knowledge.
>>>>
>>>>We can calculate this and if we disregard draws the chance that winner of 60-40
>>>>is better is indeed 97.4%.
>>>
>>>
>>>Even without draws we cannot calculate it because we need information about the
>>>apriori distribution of the probability of the better player to win.
>>>
>>>If we assume that it is 0.51 then we get 0.51^20/(0.51^20+0.49^20)
>>>
>>>If we assume that it is 0.6 we get 0.6^20/(0.6^20+0.4^20)
>>>
>>>If we assume that the probability of the better player to win has 50%
>>>probability to be 51% and 50% probability to be 60% then we get something else.
>>>
>>>Uri
>>
>>Hell(o) Uri,
>>
>>With all respect I think you're wrong.
>>
>>You can enumerate through all possible rating differences and scores.
>>(like, for score 60-40 chance of it for rating_diff 0 is d0, for rating_diff 1
>>is d1 etc...)
>
>I agree that we can calculate it but it is not the probability that I mean to.
>
>I am interested to know p(A is better than B after knowing that A won 60-40)
>
>You calculate p(the result is 60-40 when you know that A is d0 points better
>than B).
>
>practically the data that I have is the 60-40 and I do not have the data which
>program is better.
>
>I need to do some guess about the distribution of the probability of A to win B
>that I call p or in other words the distribution of d that is the rating
>difference between the players.
>This guess is called the aprior distibution of p and you can translate is to an
>aprior distribution of d.

Thanks Arpad ELO system is based on _normal distribution_ of players... so we
can calculate ELO differences.

>
>You can get 97.4% for some d0 but if you change d0 the 97.4% will be changed.
>
>>You get the function P(score,rating_diff). Factoring that through all
>>rating_diff in some range gives you answer what is the chance that rating_diff
>>lies in that range (you need to normalize P first).
>
>I agree that you can use the aprior disribution of rating diff to calculate the
>probability that the difference in rating is at some range when you get the
>result when a private case is the case when you calculate the probability that
>the winner is better but you need an aprior distribution of d.
>
>I did not read your assumption about the aprior distribution of d when you
>claimed that the probability that the winner is better given the result 60-40 is
>0.974.
>
>Practically your assumptions may be different in different cases.
>
>if you do a small change in a chess program(changing the value of pawn by 1%)
>your aprior distribution will be that d is small and you can be sure that it is
>not more than 10 elo.
>
>If you do a big change and add evaluation code or add search rules you can have
>assumtions that d can be big when it is possible that the new program  is weaker
>by 200 elo because of some logical bug.
>
>The distribution will not be symmetric in this case and it also mean that 60-40
>for A does not give the same confidence as 60-40 for B.
>
>Uri



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