Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 08:19:08 12/19/02
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On December 18, 2002 at 23:24:08, Bruce Moreland wrote: >On December 18, 2002 at 22:43:45, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On December 18, 2002 at 17:18:56, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >>>But this doesn't address the problem I pointed out with Omid's thing: >>> >>>A takes 30 seconds, produces 50 answers. >>> >>>B takes 40 seconds, produces 55 answers. >>> >>>It makes absolutely no sense to say that B is better than A, and if the time >>>differential is large enough, and the difference in number of solutions is small >>>enough, it may make sense to say the reverse. >> >> >>I don't disagree there... > >I've lost Omid, so I'll try to get you to see what I'm talking about then. > >Omid proves that with his program, VR=3 is better than R=2. > >He assumed before he started that R=2 is better than R=3. So he never tested >R=3 to create a baseline, before tweaking R=3 to create VR=3. I thought he left that question "open" in his paper, because as you said, he didn't test it. In particular, "adaptive null-move (variable R)" was omitted. As for the R=2 vs R=3 question, that seems to be "open" and wasn't answered, but one has to ask "does he have to answer _every_ possible question (which would be desirable but is it a necessary condition for valid testing?) or can he simply test against a known algorithm that many of us used for a long time, namely R=2? Not testing with adaptive R=2/3 is an omission. Is it a _fatal_ omission? Tough question to answer. > >But he does include numbers for R=3 for a couple of test suites, and the >solution numbers are almost identical with R=2. Of course R=3 takes about 40% >as much time as R=2, so these numbers are superior. > >So for these suites, R=3 is better than R=2 for this program. How do you >compare a variant of R=3 against anything when your program is already acting as >if R=3 is better than R=2? The numbers are either bogus or point to a larger >conclusion. > >bruce I wouldn't argue against your conclusion except for the "numbers are bogus". And perhaps he should have done more work with a real R=3 and R=2/3 type program. However, in a narrow context, namely the idea of the "verification search" he did do pretty well in showing that it was no worse than R=2 in terms of nodes searched, which is the way I looked at this...
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