Author: Rolf Tueschen
Date: 05:37:42 09/10/02
Go up one level in this thread
On September 09, 2002 at 20:19:42, martin fierz wrote: >On September 09, 2002 at 12:25:03, Rolf Tueschen wrote: > >>Let's go back to education in school and university. Leaving eidetic people >>aside. I know for sure that you would never accept if students cheated with all >>kind of hidden help during examinations. You would say that students should be >>able to "think" for the correct answers. Looking at the help and then telling >>what is written there as perfect answer, this isn't making any sense. >> >>So, this is the ethic we all know and obey to. > >this is just not true. It is true. But thanks anyway for the many good arguments. >in many exams at my university, we were allowed to bring >along any material we wanted. the real question you want to have answered by an >exam is: can the student give you the correct answer? it doesnt matter if he >looks this up in a book, or figures it out himself. Martin, you know that this isn't true. We are now in a debate about definitions. Depending on the field you are of course allowed to use material of different well defined sources, but you might agree that e.g. a reader with the questions and the perfect answers is not included! That makes the difference. It's a questions of the parts and the whole. And if teachers want to examine your solving abilities they don't want particularly test your memory. But let me add also this. Real class, not to speak of genius, must also be able to do it without any help at all. So, please, do not confuse the truth with the factual situation in our education system. :) Hint: Take the difference between multiple choice questions and open questions. Here you have the reason why medical experts are trained on such tasks where they must exclude inappropriate solutions. That is the big part of their later professional work. The rest is practice. But before you get annoyed by too lengthly talking let me repeat my critic against tables. It's not the added material as such, it's the perfect answer in the material. This is the scandal. > a student who knows nothing >at all will not know what book to bring, or where to look up. >once you start working seriously, not in artificial exam situations, it is >always allowed to look up stuff you did earlier, or you read in a book but dont >remember the details. This is perfectly ok. > would you go to a doctor who tells you "i will not look up >in my books if i don't know what you have got?" - i don't think so! Right. But not for the reasons you thought. I would consult a different expert if the first would say that he didn't know, no matter what he promissed to do afterwards. And not because he might be a weak expert but because my problem surely looked complicated. So I would always like to hear at least two experts. BTW nobody would say what you said. Because you will always have situations where you don't know _yet_. That is the daily routine then that is required. That is simply called the process of making diagnoses. I would avoid the quacks who already have the solution before they could have known the problem. Of course certain problems can be solved by the authority alone of some guru. > >>How could you explain why it is so difficult to convince chess programmers and >>probably checkers programmers too, that the usage of "perfect" databases in >>tournaments is absolutely odd tradition and should be regarded as unethical? > >easy to explain... because your whole argument is completely arbitrary. >computers and humans arrive at the same ends (playing a game well) by totally >different means. you want to forbid the computers from doing something they are >good at. The word ___ comes to mind. :) >if your arguments were valid, Of course they are, no? > you could also say: "wait, a human can >only look at 3 positions per second. therefore, all computer programs must be >limited to searching at that speed." you CANNOT compare the way humans and >programs work. Let's stay on topic, Martin. We were talking about perfect answers! Term comes from the idea that many games will be (perfectly) solved some day. Would you deny that a human player can also "look" at the perfect solution and then play it? Where did you read that humans are forbidden to get some implantation? I only read that it's forbidden to use books or outside help... Would you like to see what happens then? I tell you. Until the game isn't completely solved human players will be superior! So, in consequence, let's forget about the implantation of perfect solutions, in both, machine and human player. > >besides, for the endgame TB case in checkers, if i really cared, i could use my >computer to produce a big set of rules which allow it to decide with 99% >certainty whether a given 6-piece checkers position is a win or a loss or a >draw. Then do that. Not for me, but for a demonstration a still not sufficiently solved game. If it's solved, no human player would play you anyway. Then your program would be a good trainer. (Martin, just between the two of us. Why do you want to shorten the period until the perfect solution is found. Seems premature. Just look at certain strategies in other economy fields.) >the playing strength of such a program would be nearly the same as of the >program with perfect information. so your argument against tables would be >circumvented, and the program would be nearly the same as before. Almost you mean. Yes, why don't you do it?? >but give me >one single reason to do this... just to satisfy rolf tueschen? Of course not. Well, it's difficult to tell if Idon't know you better. So all I can say that I have two arguments. Science. You know that checkers is a game. Now, implementing perfect data is no longer interesting. Ok, checkers is a weak example, because it's almost solved, but think of more complicated examples. It is not the perfect automatism that interests, but the thought process. A computer with a mosaic of well chosen little programs for strategies to find a good move. The moment you can define the best move or a sufficiently good move for all concrete positions, the gameis over, because it's solved. But the technical problem to create the relations between many little programs and then to optimize the cooperation that is the scientifically interesting work. Second argument. Fair play. I make it short. Realising that humans are especially forbidden to use books or tables with the perfect solutions, it's simply rather primitive fould play if you argue "Fantastic! Because I umpute all the things into my program and my machine it doesn't matter, it wouldn't even attract attention if I would hide it, if I implantated the complete solutions of endgame theory. I have plenty of space left!" You know that is like doping in sports. You want to have advantages because you know that without youwould lose to your opponents. Because the endgame, at least in chess is a real mess for computers. >i have tested my program playing with 4-piece / 6-piece / 8-piece endgame >databases. the difference in playing strength is actually much smaller than you >might expect. what really improves is the quality of the evaluation, i.e. if you >get to close to the db, the program with the db will just say draw or win, while >the one without it will say +a little or + a lot Did you test it against strong human opposition? Yes, perhaps checkers is too far developped already. You must go for either chess or directly GO in future. Hint for the chessplayers here. HEX is also a fantastic game to play. Although also solved by computers yet. Rolf Tueschen > >aloha > martin
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