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Subject: Re: Hello from Edmonton (and on Temporal Differences)

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 11:46:18 08/04/02

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On August 04, 2002 at 14:06:55, Sune Fischer wrote:

will, believe, think, consider.

Please proof it. chess is very simple compared to other
applications where automatic tuning is supposed to work
in the future.

So far i have not seen a single decent program that
can do better with automatic tuning than without.

there is a shitload of freeware programs and volunteers to rewrite
them to enable automatic tuning. Please
pick a strong program and tune it. I would advice crafty.
A small parameter set. Even big advantage for the tuners,
but already a good program to start with.

Finding the best values as a human isn't trivial. It sure isn't
for programs. But humans use domain knowledge your tuner doesn't.

>On August 04, 2002 at 13:26:05, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>
>>On August 04, 2002 at 11:47:01, Sune Fischer wrote:
>>
>>>On August 04, 2002 at 09:13:31, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>
>>>>On August 01, 2002 at 05:16:55, Sune Fischer wrote:
>>>>
>>>>We must not think too simple about autotuning. It is a complicated
>>>>matter. Yet the obvious thing is that the autotuner has no domain specific
>>>>knowledge.
>>>>
>>>>So suppose that someone *manages* to find a good way of tuning.
>>>>
>>>>Even the simple evaluation of deep blue, which had about a few tens
>>>>of patterns and each pattern indexed by an array or so from 64.
>>>>
>>>>We talk about 5000 adjustable patterns (i like round numbers good) or
>>>>so for an average program.
>>>>
>>>>to tune that in the incredible good
>>>>  O (n log n) that's like (using 2 log)
>>>>
>>>>==> 5000 x 12 = 60000 operations.
>>>>
>>>>Each operation consists of playing a game or 250 at auto player.
>>>>No commercial program ever managed to improve by playing blitz...
>>>>
>>>>250 games x 60000 = 15 000 000 games.
>>>>
>>>>Get the problem of learning slowly?
>>>
>>>No, TDLeaf is a steepest descent algorithm, if it works it will go much faster
>>>because it's going directly against the gradient.
>>>I'm not saying it will be easy, or that it won't require a large number of
>>>games, but I believe its potential is greater than what is humanly possible.
>>>
>>>
>>>>Now we talk about a simple thing called chess, just 64 squares.
>>>>If i autotune something to drive my car there are a zillion parameters
>>>>to tune ;)
>>>
>>>Yes, but you tune them _all at once_ so it's really not that bad :)
>>
>>Exactly the answer i wanted to hear. This is simply impossible to tune
>>them all very well at once without domain knowledge. If you get a perfect
>>tuning at
>>
>>O (n log n) you already get a nobel prize.
>
>Well I wouldn't count on it :)
>Deepest descent can train hundreds of weights if the energy space is smooth
>enough, just think of back propagation.
>I believe this will be the case for a chess evaluator, linear forms, independent
>variables, should be doable IMO.
>
>>The tuning we need, and definitely traffic, is not 'all a little tuned',
>>errors are not acceptible simply. One parameter which is -1.0 instead of
>>+0.22, that's an unacceptible error simply. Hand tuning is even
>>more accurate. It even sees the difference between 0.22 and 0.40 very
>>clearly. In case of the pro's, even the difference between 0.22 and 0.20
>>is getting felt in some cases (bishop vs knight).
>
>That could happen if they start off from random values, it would be a so called
>local minimum. If they are initialized with the best known values they should
>improve from there.
>
>>Obviously you won't achieve such accuracy under O (n log n) with TD learning,
>>it's a rude and primitif algorithm which can be considered lucky if the plus
>>and minus sign are already guessed right.
>
>With 5000 weights, then yeah you'll need 10000 games, but isn't that doable now
>a days? You might see rapid improvement in the beginning, and then the curvature
>diminishes and the process is slowed down.
>
>>The pro's are not far off perfect tuning nowadays. Of course the parameters
>>can get improved, but definitely not their tuning.
>
>But how do you, as a human, find the best values?
>You just sit there, watch it play and then go; hey it should have played e4
>instead of e3, so I better adjust...
>How much do you adjust, and do you do this for all 5000 weights?
>This ad hoc method sucks bigtime, plane and simple.
>The pros are not doing it this way, I can't believe that.
>
>>I doubt you can achieve
>>much better tuning with crafty too.
>
>If Crafty was a little easier to hack I would do it, but I can't even get it to
>compile. (there is some stack space problem with the egtb.c).
>
>>It's programs like DIEP where tuning can be improved bigtime, but of course
>>we talk about FINE tuning. Whether it's 0.023 instead of 0.020.
>>
>>In DIEP i work not at 1/100 of a pawn but 1/1000 of a pawn. Another 1000
>>horrors more :)
>
>Floats could be needed for this, integer calculation (even milipawns) do not
>work well with sums of fractions...
>
>-S.



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