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

Author: Rolf Tueschen

Date: 06:27:15 01/15/06

Go up one level in this thread


On January 15, 2006 at 07:55:18, Uri Blass wrote:

>On January 15, 2006 at 07:10:41, Stephen A. Boak wrote:
>
>>On January 15, 2006 at 04:56:15, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>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
>>
>>Hi Uri,
>>
>>I'm tired, and I haven't studied your above figures very much, so I'll look at
>>them again later, after I've slept.
>>
>>But I have to ask, how can you make up *hypothetical* numbers and draw any
>>conclusions?  This seems far less logical than Marc's *real* experiment that
>>obtains *real* figures and reports them as is.
>>
>>I did not see Marc draw any mathematical conclusions (above) that oppose your
>>own conclusions.  Instead, he only seemed to describe his test & explain the
>>reported results.
>>
>>To the contrary, Marc carefully points out:
>>
>>" ... 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 ...".
>>
>>Why do *you* create a 'strawman', i.e artificial premise (unstated conclusion),
>>attribute it to *Marc*, and then shoot it down?
>>
>>Data gathering (experimenting) is simply data gathering.  It is one of the most
>>important tools of science.  It *never* proves something--so why critize the
>>gathering & reporting.
>
>The main problem is that I can learn nothing important from the data that marc
>gave.
>
>I do not know the problems.
>I know that
>Fruit improved more than rybka when rybka solved more positions than fruit in
>both (10 seconds per move and 180 seconds per move).
>
>The problem is that by choosing the right set of positions I can always show
>that the weaker program improved more.
>
>take a simple example without numbers.
>
>In an easy set of problem
>the weak program solved half of them in 10 seconds and all of them in 180
>seconds when the strong program solved all of them in 10 seconds.
>
>You can say that the weaker program improved more because it solved twice more
>position when the stronger did not improve because it solved the same.
>
>This claim is simply not convincing.

Or the problems are too easy to solve.


>
>Uri



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