[Computer-go] Great Triumph for Zen !

[Petr Baudis]

On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 04:40:14PM +0100, "Ingo Althöfer" wrote:
> "less variance" - I have to think about that. 
> 
> Is there some thumb measure describing how much randomness/variance
> the simulations of a bot contain?
> 
> Did someone run experiments (with his bot) to see if there is some
> optimal medium level of variance/randomness in the sims?

"Variance" in itself is not what matters per se, but it implies that the
program will not get strayed off too much by bias of its simulation
heuristics when the bias is wrong. High variance allows for the program
to at least still resolve the simulation ambiguously (wrt. e.g. status
of some group) instead of unconditionally declaring the wrong result.

On the other hand, "strength" of simulation means that if the heuristics
do give the _correct_ result, you want them to declare it with as much
strength and unconditionality as possible.

Unfortunately, these two goals are often in opposition and finding the
correct equilibrium is, after all, what most of "tuning" is all about.

I believe this is one of the most annoying open problems in MCTS
and also the reason why tuning simulations is considered "black magic".
Wouldn't it be so much easier to improve the simulations if we could
precisely measure how much it effects these two aspects? Alas...

-- 
				Petr "Pasky" Baudis
	Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better
	than the other way around.  -- Eric S. Raymond