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Subject: Re: OT: "Impossible" vs. "improbable"

Author: José Carlos

Date: 08:20:11 11/16/99

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On November 15, 1999 at 15:28:21, Sven Reichard wrote:

>On November 15, 1999 at 03:43:15, Shep wrote:
>
>>As a mathematician, I have to jump in here and correct you. :)
>>You probably mean "statistically improbable".
>>It is not _impossible_ to find the optimal CM settings (or to win the lottery a
>>million successive times) because the number of settings is finite, so you could
>>(given a large, but finite amount of time) try them all out and come up with the
>>best one.
>>
>>Sorry to be nit-picking, but I felt that had to be said. :))
>>
>>---
>>Shep
>
>As another mathematician, I have to jump in here and correct you :))
>If there were an algorithm that would give us a numerical playing strength of
>any given engine, your approach would work (in a finite number of steps).
>However, lacking such an algorithm, your optimization problem (on a discrete
>space, to make things worse) is not well-defined.
>
>Sven.

  I'm not a mathematician :( but I think we could define an algorithm to
evaluate who's best from two players, for example, best score of 1 million games
match :)
  Then, we'd only have to make those matches and decide wich is the optimal
settings by counting victories, or something like that.
  I would not be a "real" measure of optimal settings, but a well defined one, I
think...

  José C.

PS.: Sorry for not being a mathematician :)



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