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Subject: Re: I can't believe this bashing is being allowed on here: "Bad Math Topic"

Author: martin fierz

Date: 20:01:41 09/04/02

Go up one level in this thread


On September 04, 2002 at 22:46:04, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On September 04, 2002 at 21:58:55, martin fierz wrote:
>
>>On September 04, 2002 at 21:10:18, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>On September 04, 2002 at 20:42:13, martin fierz wrote:
>>>
>>>>On September 04, 2002 at 20:16:00, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On September 04, 2002 at 19:22:25, martin fierz wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On September 04, 2002 at 18:20:49, Terry Ripple wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>This is hardly the place to try and discredit our fellow CCC members and you
>>>>>>>know who i'am refering to! This was very distasteful and uncalled for and
>>>>>>>shouldn't have been allowed to continue at all.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>I just wanted to give my opinion on this matter!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Regards,
>>>>>>>      Terry
>>>>>>
>>>>>>i disagree with you... bob's DTS paper has 2 major flaws with numbers:
>>>>>>1. numbers in a table are claimed to be measured, and they are not, and vincent
>>>>>>is absolutely right to point this out.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>2. bob's rounding of 1.81 to 1.9 and rounding the average of these rounded
>>>>>>results can result in an average speedup of 1.82 to be reported as 2.0. this is
>>>>>>ridiculous and any undergraduate student should not get away with something like
>>>>>>that.
>>>>>
>>>>>I don't follow that point.  Each "speedup" is computed from two numbers,
>>>>>the N processor time divided into the one processor time.  There is a
>>>>>roundoff/truncation issue there.  I didn't say "I did round up".  I said
>>>>>"it is possible that the log eater might have done that."
>>>>>
>>>>>But that only happened on a single speedup.  There is no "second" roundup
>>>>>because each speedup is only computed once.  So for normal math, the error
>>>>>is +/- .05.  If I happened to have done it in integer math, then the error
>>>>>_could_ have been +/- .09.  Unfortunately, without the code, I can't say
>>>>>which.  I suspect it was pure floating point, using the %.1f type format,
>>>>>which means .05 is the actual error.  But that is just my best guess.  Not
>>>>>a statement of fact...
>>>>
>>>>well, on the famous page in question, you give speedups for every position in
>>>>table 5, and then an average speedup in table 6. as far as i can see, table 6 is
>>>>the main result of this paper, not table 5, right?
>>>
>>>OK.  I was only considering the data in the main position-by-position speedup
>>>table.  The other table is not a round-up, but you should be able to check
>>>that from the first table.  IE IIRC the output, it produced individual speedup
>>>values followed by a column average, all in the same program.  IE I would hope
>>>that if you sum up a column in the individual speedup table, and divide by 24,
>>>you get the number in the summary table...  hopefully using normal FP rounding
>>>to a %.1f format.  :)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> i surely would not remember
>>>>all 24 numbers, but i would remember that you claim to get a nice 2.0 speedup on
>>>>a dual machine.
>>>
>>>On cray blitz, it was very close, yes.  It started dropping however.  With
>>>only one processor, and splitting at the root (which almost nobody else is
>>>willing to do) the search is _very_ efficient.  It gets worse as the "party"
>>>gets bigger of course... :)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>IF you really rounded the way you might have done, you have two roundings. i can
>>>>see that you computed 2.0 from the 24 single speedups, when the proper result
>>>>would be 1.9583333... which you should give as 1.96, not as 2.0.
>>>
>>>As I said, everybody reported to 1 decimel place, and I simply stuck with
>>>that.  Even the 1 place is very "noisy" in reality and doesn't mean a thing
>>>IMHO...
>>
>>if you give the single speedup with 1 digit accuracy, you have to give the
>>average of that with two digits accuracy, since you have 24 ~ 5^2 results, so
>>the average speedup has a five times smaller error on it than the single
>>speedup. and if you give that with one digit it's supposed to mean that it has
>>an error of ~0.1 - so the average has an error of ~0.02 with this reasoning =>
>>two digits are the thing to do.
>>you could also just measure if the 0.1 is as noisy as you think - i'd be doing
>>that if i had a 2 processor machine... all you have to do is let it think on the
>>same position 10 times and write down the times (without rounding...) & compute
>>the standard error. repeat for as many positions as you like, to eliminate
>>variability due to some weird position.
>>
>
>
>
>How about this:
>
>Position is kopec 2, which has always been "interesting".
>
>log.001:              time=1:01  cpu=100%  mat=0  n=24338689  fh=89%  nps=396k
>log.002:              time=43.96  cpu=199%  mat=0  n=32358472  fh=88%  nps=736k
>log.003:              time=1:25  cpu=199%  mat=0  n=62974448  fh=88%  nps=736k
>log.004:              time=1:12  cpu=199%  mat=0  n=53702512  fh=88%  nps=740k
>log.005:              time=44.00  cpu=199%  mat=0  n=32372099  fh=88%  nps=735k
>log.006:              time=24.33  cpu=199%  mat=0  n=18295076  fh=89%  nps=751k
>log.007:              time=44.08  cpu=199%  mat=0  n=32435811  fh=88%  nps=735k
>log.008:              time=1:00  cpu=199%  mat=0  n=44237641  fh=88%  nps=735k
>log.009:              time=52.34  cpu=199%  mat=0  n=38684097  fh=88%  nps=739k
>log.010:              time=24.36  cpu=199%  mat=0  n=18322715  fh=89%  nps=752k
>
>The first entry is 1 cpu.  The rest are two cpus.  :)
>
>thank that is variable enough?

wow! that IS variable indeed! standard deviation is 20 seconds or 40% on this...
of course, one position is no proof that it is always this bad, and i'm sure you
selected a nice one for this :-)
as i said... repeat for many positions, and see how bad it is on average.

>You have the table of numbers rounded to 1 decimel place.  What if you add
>'em up and divide by 24 and keep 2 or 3 decimel places?

well, yes, that is how i arrived at the 1.96 i'm always talking about... which
is just what you should have reported instead of the 2.0 for the average
speedup.


> Of course after you
>see the data from above, you might not think it very informative any longer.
>
>:)

if all positions are this bad, you have a point of course :-)
but to really convince me you'd have to demonstrate that this huge variability
is typical - your wording "has always been "interesting"" seems to suggest that
this is a position which has a larger variability than others?

aloha
  martin



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