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Subject: Re: Thanks for telling me its strength is not positional!

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 01:56:15 01/15/06

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On January 15, 2006 at 02:07:06, Marc Lacrosse wrote:

>>
>>Lacrosse's analysis showed above all that in the 87 positions he tested, that
>>Shredder 9 and Rybka scored 57% given 10 seconds, and Fruit and Toga and company
>>are much weaker with so little time, and thus much weaker in blitz.
>
>>
>>                                       Albert
>
>Just a little point, Albert.
>
>What my little experience shows is not an argument for telling that engine A is
>better or worse than engine B at faster or slower time control.
>
>What I precisely did is the following :
>let say :
>- engine A solves "x" positions in 180 seconds and
>- engine B solves "y" positions in 18o seconds.
>I recorded:
>- what percentage of "x" engine A had already solved after 10 seconds
>- what percentage of "y" engine B had already solved after 10 seconds
>
>So each engine is compared at 10 seconds with the number of positions that it
>will solve _itself_ at 180 seconds
>
>So when I record that Rybka has a 57% score and Fruit a 39%, this does _not_ say
>that Rybka is "stronger" or "weaker" than Fruit, and we could have a much weaker
>1800 elo engine getting a 80% (or a 15%) score in the same test.
>
>What the little test tends to show is just that rybka has already shown 57% of
>its own analysis capacity at 10 seconds whereas Fruit has a larger margin of
>improvement (compared with itself) when given a larger time control.
>
>Marc

Your experiment show nothing

imagine that there are 100 problems

imagine that engine B need square root of the time of engine A to solve
positions.

engine A solves problem number n in 4n seconds for n<45 and
problem number n in 1000n seconds for n>=45

engine A solves 2 problems in 10 seconds and  44 problems in 180 seconds.

Engine B solves problem n in sqrt(4n) seconds for n<45 and in sqrt(1000n)
seconds for n>=45

engine B solve 25 problems in 10 seconds and 44 problems in 180 seconds.

engine B improve less than engine A by your test because 44/2 is bigger than
44/25 but it clear than engine B improves more than engine A based on the times.

My point is that you cannot compare number of solution in x seconds with number
of solutions in y seconds and get conclusions.

The only logical comparison is comaparison of time to solve x solutions and time
to solve y solutions and you did not do that comparison.

Uri



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