Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 12:37:53 08/08/02
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On August 08, 2002 at 15:10:43, Roger Brown wrote: [snip] >No argument here Dann. I guess this come full circle to an issue I raised in >another forum. I am quite a fan of the statistical approach to things. However >you raise a fascinating point: precisely what is the statistical minimum number >of wins/games required to confer the title of best on any >person/team/performance? I am a fan of using 30 as a rock bottom test set for measurements. For example: http://www.bized.ac.uk/timeweb/digging/dig_source_dof.htm > Computerchess I suppose affords the chance for a statistical determination of >which program is best. Unlike mortal chessplayers, they do not tire, get >annoyed, sick, crash and burn....well, maybe here is a similarity! Thousands of >games can be played day and night to determine which program is best. > > Or is the entire debate pointless as are these competitions where GM's and >computers square off over far fewer than ten games? If a player plays 6 games against a computer 5 times, then we have 30 games. Any accumulation of information is better than no accumulation. Now, to get decent error bars requires many hundreds of measurements. But I'll take whatever I can get. >>So a match between a computer and a human of 6 games will decide a winner. But >>it will not show who is better. > > > Agreed. I guess apart from giving the people a circus, this is a meaningless >series...well I guess I can hope that there is an opening innovation or stroke >of brilliance in a game to excite me instead of anti-computer play. :) It's not meaningless. It will produce a "Champion". We look with admiration at any champion. An SSDF championship is a great achievement. A WMCCC championship is a great achievement. The same with any other sort of championship [beyond, for instance, the "World Championship of Dann Corbit's Basement].
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