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Subject: Re: interesting idea (some food for thought)

Author: Keith Evans

Date: 16:37:46 09/07/02

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On September 07, 2002 at 11:13:20, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>
>Jose made a really good point about observed data vs measured data.  After
>thinking about it for a bit, I decided that it is a point strong enough to
>change the way we think about "measured" and "observed".
>
>Some examples:
>
>speed.  Impossible to measure.
>
>For example, your automobile (newer vehicles) compute speed by counting the
>revolutions of the tailshaft (output) of the transmission, then factoring in
>the rear-end ratio and the circumference of the rear wheels.  It _computes_
>the speed from that.
>
>A radar measures the frequency change in a radio signal as it bounces off
>a moving target and _computes_ the speed based on the frequency change.
>
>A GPS observes to "positions" in terms of lattitude and longitude, uses some
>geometry to compute the distance between them, and uses a clock to measure the
>time to cover that distance, and displays speed.

A GPS measures pseudo-ranges and uses these to compute position based upon the
positions of the satellites. The satellites broadcast their ephemeris data, or
with A-GPS you get it from a server. (You have to know or search for the doppler
too just to be able to mesaure the pseudo-ranges.) Nav guys like to use a Kalman
filter as part of the position solution - they may actually get the velocity out
of the Kalman filter, but I'm not a nav guy. Anyways the GPS position isn't
measured directly either.

In GPS you use phrases like "< xxx meter circular error probability",
"probability of detection", "probability of false alarms",...

I wanted to keep this short since it's pretty off topic.

>So Speed can't be measured directly, it has to be computed.  And this isn't a
>surprise since speed is defined as distance over time.
>
>Brightness.  (of a light, not a person.  :)  )
>
>This is a direct measure of an electrical signal produced by some sort of
>device (photo-resistor, photo-cell, optical transistor, etc) and then that
>voltage is used to compute a brightness level in Lumens...
>
>Loudness (sound).
>
>Ditto.
>
>NPS.
>
>nodes searched divided by time in seconds.  Computed.
>
>Speedup
>
>one-processor time divided by the N-processor time.  Computed
>
>We really don't have a lot of "observed" data nowadays.   Some, yes.  Where
>were you at 8pm last night.  But more is computed...
>
>Which means if we start to define observed vs computed, we don't end up with
>very much in the "observed" column.
>
>In a chess program I can count nodes and "compute" time (end-time minus
>start-time) and then compute a nps value.  I can measure run-time and compute
>speed-up.  But I can't directly measure speed at all.
>
>strange when you think about it...  :)



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