Re: [computer-go] Using floating point sounds very strange to me

[Robin Kramer <robin@xxxxxxxx>]

chrilly wrote:

> > On Fri, Jan 07, 2005 at 10:46:30AM +0100, chrilly wrote:
> >    
> > > [...] if SlugGo plays stronger, Speed counts and one should not use -
> > > at least not on the x86 - floating point.
> > >      
> > Of all the things GNU Go does, score estimation is so small part that
> > it really does not matter if it uses floats, ints, or a mechanical
> > abacus. Pattern matching, local reading, and other important suff
> > is mostly done with integers.
> >
> >    
> Thanks for clarifying things. It was said before, but it is so different to
> chess, that it is hard to believe. This does not mean, that I do not trust
> Go-Programmers. If this would be the case, I would not read the list. But
> working for more than 10 years professionally in chess creates a certain
> view of the programming world. And it is hard to change perspectives.
> But that the evaluation does not matter for speed is so fundamentally
> different. Hard to grasp.
>
> I also think that a clean and debugged code is more worth than a few percent
> of speed. E.g. I would not write any more a chess programm in
> Assembly-Language.
>
> Float-Point-Trick (OT):
> In every chess tournament there are some groupies. Unfortunately not nice
> chicks, but older man who know everything better than the programmers
> itself. In one of the tournaments around 95 the top-programmers agreed to
> invent the "floating-point-trick". This was soon THE topic of the groupies
> and every programmer was asked by them if he uses the trick. At the end of
> the tournament they even adviced the amateurs how to use it. One tester of a
> programm refused to test the programm further til the programmer has not
> implemented the floating point-trick.
> The irony of the story is, that Intel announced soon after the tournament
> MMX which is indeed related to the floating-point unit. The joke proved to
> be serious and most of the groupies do not probably know till today, that we
> made only a joke.
>
> Chrilly
>
>
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>  
Do you really even need integers for playing go.  I thought the basic 
metric for Go was stones(which may be fundamentally different than an 
integer).  Maybe this one of those cultural issues that will have to be 
over come.  I don't know if it is true or not, but I am going to share 
it with you regardless, "The Eastern Go schools resemble mathematics 
schools, in the training and organization, and that while many 
mathematical lemmas and proofs are generated in the west, go lemmas and 
proofs are produced in the east."

Have you ever heard that joke, "A don is doing pretty good if he can 
count to 1".

Sincerely,

Robin Kramer
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