Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 19:50:58 05/03/04
Go up one level in this thread
On May 03, 2004 at 19:04:34, martin fierz wrote: >On May 03, 2004 at 11:51:24, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote: > >>On May 03, 2004 at 11:04:59, Anthony Cozzie wrote: >> >>>As a physicist, you consider all numbers within an order of magnitude as equal >>>;) >> >>Then you are not a physicist, but an engineer :) > >not at all - engineers care about exact numbers. else everything fails (e.g. all >kinds of mars probes, ariane rockets, bridges, buildings and much much more, >because exact numbers ARE important in engineering). > > >>As a physicist, you care first and foremost about the error analysis of >>the results (which immediately allows you to conclude whether they are >>identical or not). > >that's not what physics is about. error analysis is important for sure, but >never "first and foremost". > >>Ever seen any error margins in a computer chess paper? > >in fact yes - ernst heinz used to do stuff on statistical significance of some >sort, IIRC it was whether you could conclude that one engine was stronger than >another based on tournament results and rating computations. also, IIRC, his >statistics were wrong :-) (IIRC he didn't seem to appreciate that if you have >A+dA and B+dB, then the difference A-B does NOT have the error dA+dB). lots of >IIRCs here, an old man's memory can easily be wrong... > >but in this context it would be interesting to know whether the number reported >by bob (3.1) and those others floating around (3.0, 2.8) have any kind of error >estimate. don't really understand who exactly floats those other numbers >(vincent? you? both of you? anybody else?), don't really care. >generally, if you give a number as %.1f educated people will assume that it has >at least an error of +-0.1, making the numbers 3.1 and 3.0 compatible. and >making the numbers 3.1 and 2.8 nearly compatible, if you think of 0.1 as >one-sigma. it's you and bob who gave those numbers, it would be nice if you guys >also gave an error estimate on those numbers, because if you are going to say >0.1, we can just drop the entire thread. If you recall, I _have_ given some error estimates in the past. Remember the wildly varying speedup numbers I showed you the first time this issue came up? That's the point Vincent refuses to accept. There is no _exact_ speedup number. By the very nature of parallel alpha/beta such a number can't possibly exist. There is a speedup number (with error range) for a specific problem set and chess engine. But trying to convince Vincent of anything is like talking to a stick. > >oh wait, it was one of those vincent vs. bob "yes-you-did no-i-didn't" threads, >so we could probably just drop it anyway :-) > >cheers > martin
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