Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: evaluation function of programs(I want predicted result of the game)

Author: Komputer Korner

Date: 05:49:32 07/31/98

Go up one level in this thread


On July 31, 1998 at 07:49:14, Amir Ban wrote:

>On July 31, 1998 at 04:01:08, blass uri wrote:
>
>>
>>On July 31, 1998 at 02:24:20, Jouni Uski wrote:
>>
>>>On July 31, 1998 at 01:51:57, blass uri wrote:
>>>
>>>>The programs I know give me evaluation in pawns and I prefer to see
>>>>in the evaluation function the predicted result of the game(number between 0
>>>>and 1) and not an evaluation in pawns.
>>>>
>>>>Uri
>>>
>>>What are You meaning? Predicted result evaluation has only 3 values: 0, 0.5 and
>>>1! Not very informative...
>>
>>I mean the average resultI expect to have
>>for example it can be 0.7 if I believe the probability to win is 50%
>>and the probability of a draw is 40%
>>
>>Uri
>>>
>>>Jouni
>
>You can see from a few responses you got, that the interpretation of the eval in
>terms of expected result is not obvious to many.
>
>What are you asking for is not so simple. Suppose I printed out the score as a
>value between -1 and 1 that represents the expected outcome. You would scan a
>database of games and find that there are say 9000 positions that I evaluate as
>0.20, but you would find that the average outcome of those positions is actually
>0.35. You would complain that I'm giving you wrong information, and you would be
>right in a sense.
>
>Even if my score would be right for any game database that you can find, it's
>not obvious to me that it would still be correct in say a Fritz vs. Junior
>match, for many reasons. One is that computers tend to have different positions
>than humans, another that Junior has a better understanding of the games it
>plays itself, and the fact that one program is stronger than the other would
>also skew the "correct" score in some direction.
>
>Currently program scores don't have much objective meaning, so there is no
>problem, and you can't argue that they are wrong except by showing that the
>program loses a lot, which is a weak argument, because many programs have wrong
>evaluations and win.
>
>A few months ago I suggested here (or maybe in rgcc I don't remember) to use the
>score interpretation as expected outcome as a way of tuning the evaluation
>function. The idea was simply that what the program evaluates should match the
>actual percentages that occurred in many games. This method of tuning looked to
>me very attractive because it uses evaluation only and doesn't depend on search.
>
>I'm using this method as a rough test if a change I'm doing is in the right
>direction. It had some nice successes, and also a few failures. I don't trust it
>on its own. A change in formulation may perhaps make it more successful.
>
>Amir

See this quarter's ICCA journal for a discussion of Knightcap's temporal
difference learning about this very same subject.
--
Komputer Korner



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.