Author: Frank Phillips
Date: 10:19:29 01/21/03
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On January 20, 2003 at 21:18:48, Dann Corbit wrote: >On January 20, 2003 at 17:47:05, Frank Phillips wrote: >>On January 20, 2003 at 16:51:00, Dann Corbit wrote: >>>No contest can truly tell us which program is strongest. Not even a trillion >>>rounds of round-robin. >> >>So how many? Or can we never know anything? And what does it therefore mean to >>be strongest? > >When the programs are very close (as is the case in reality) we will never know >the answer. > >The farther apart the programs are, the more easily we can be certain. For >instance, I am utterly convinced the deep fritz is stronger than TSCP. I am not >convinced that it is stronger than Chess Tiger. > >If there is a 1000 ELO difference between two programs, we will find out very >quickly. > >If there is a 100 ELO difference, it becomes more difficult, but a huge number >of games will give us a very convincing result. > >If there is a 10 ELO difference, it will be impossible to tell, as the >randomness in play will be a greater difference than the difference in true >strength. Dann Thanks for taking the time to answer. Like you, I image, I was taught (or at least implicitly accepted) that these results are merely samples in a hypothosised distribution of possibilities. Logically all uncertainty cannot be removed and therefore nothing can be known with certainty, which leads some to conclude that nothing can be know that is not tautological. From your 10 point 1 trillion game example, I would conclude that the winner is stronger; although accept that I may be wrong. Frank Of course there is also the other philosophical view of probability theory described in boolean algebra. I guess this discussion belong on the other forum, perhaps after the current main topic is over. Certainly, I do not claim to have an answer or even fixed point of view. I did read some interesting on statisitics from CERN on the whole issue last year, following the is Quark good debate during CCT4.
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