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Subject: Re: Branching factor, etc

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 10:55:41 08/31/02

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On August 31, 2002 at 11:11:50, Ralf Elvsén wrote:

>On August 31, 2002 at 05:34:11, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On August 31, 2002 at 04:51:49, Ralf Elvsén wrote:
>>
>>>On August 30, 2002 at 23:00:30, Andreas Herrmann wrote:
>>>
>>>>On August 30, 2002 at 21:03:25, Uri Blass wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I know this :-)
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>But there is the odd/even issue, so the b-factor can change drastically while
>>>>>>>moving from an odd ply to an even ply, and vice versa.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>I think the best is to calculate an average branching factor from all plys.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>bf[avg] = ( bf[2] + bf[3] + bf[4] ... + bf[n] ) / (n - 1)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Andreas
>>>>>
>>>>>It is better to use
>>>>>( bf[2] * bf[3] * bf[4] ... * bf[n] )^(1/(n-1))
>>>
>>>Not if the numbers bf[i] are ratios of the type bf[i] = T[i]/T[i-1] (e.g.)
>>>Then everything will cancel out except for the first and last T[i]
>>
>>I think that this is exactly the idea about branching factor.
>>The question is if I need 1 second to get depth 1 how many seconds I need to get
>>depth n.
>>
>>It is also possible to use the formula (T(n)/T(1))^(1/n-1)
>>
>>Uri
>
>
>Well, it all depends on what you want. I personally wouldn't like this
>measure to depend heavily on T(1) which I would expect to vary much.
>And if you have a series for T which is
>
>T1 = 1 T2 = 2 T3 = 4 T4 = 16 T5 = 64
>
>and another
>
>T1 = 1 T2 = 4 T3 = 16 T4 = 32 T5 = 64
>
>then you have very different branching factors for low/high plies
>(relatively speaking) but the proposed formula gives the same
>overall value. So you are throwing away information and (in my
>opinion) relies heavily on a suspect value: T(1).
>
>Just my opinion...

( bf[2] + bf[3] + bf[4] ... + bf[n] ) / (n - 1) is also the same in both
examples so I see no advantage for using that formula.

You cannot have all information in one number but if n is relatively big the
first iterations do not change much.

Uri



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