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Subject: Re: Once again reminder: 10 games is NOTHING in comp-comp play...

Author: Christophe Theron

Date: 08:51:21 11/23/98

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On November 23, 1998 at 09:42:25, Micheal Cummings wrote:

>
>On November 23, 1998 at 09:19:42, Jouni Uski wrote:
>
>>I started to play Wcrafty 16.1 against Comet A.96. After 10 games
>>Comet was leadind by 7.5 - 2.5. Something is wrong I thought! But
>>after 34 games we see real situation.
>>
>>Comet   1 1 1 0.5 1 1 0 0 1 1    (7.5)
>>Wcrafty 0 0 0 0.5 0 0 1 1 0 0    (2.5)
>>                                                                   total
>>Comet   1 0 0 0 0.5 0 1 0 1 0.5 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0.5 1      15
>>Wcrafty 0 1 1 1 0.5 1 0 1 0 0.5 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0.5 0      19
>>
>>So please no conclusions after 10 games - we need about 40.
>>
>>Jouni
>
>
>You need more than 40, and that is quite a big swing that crafty made to
>eventually win over comet. I do not know what to conclude after those sets of
>games. I would like to see some of the games thouugh too see why there was such
>a big swing.
>
>Not that I do not believe you


It is not a big swing. Run computer matches everyday and you will notice this
all the time.

If you want to check this, flip a coin 30 times, and compute the score of head
versus tail after every flip. Notice the swings in the 20 first results.

I generally use 60 games matches and consider them to be +/- 2.5% accurate.

That is, even if prog A scores 52.5% against prog B on 60 games, I consider it
is impossible to say which is the best. I say A is better if it scores above
52.5%.

For 30 games matches I would take a +/- 5% margin of error.

In the case of the Crafty/Comet match above, the result is 55.9% in favor of
Crafty on 34 games, so I would conclude that Crafty is better. But you have to
realize that the confidence on this statement is not high, so if I had to bet I
would not bet too much.


    Christophe



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