Posts by Bill & Patsy
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
Guidence from Project Team Requested
(Message 4250)
Posted 19 Jul 2008 by Bill & Patsy Post: Ok Bill & Patsy...you are obviously new here by that post...and your criticism. Thanks, Jeff, for your spirited defense of MW. That's nicely encouraging. Yes, I'm a newby. And yes, my two postings to date have both been intentionally mildly provocative - in response to postings I found troubling. In shopping for a worthy project (even with a modest resource like mine which in no way compares to your giant resources), it doesn't hurt to "test the waters". Both times I've received a spirited defense of MW. This is what I'm looking for, and confirms that this project and its crunchers may actually be as good as they seem. Accordingly, MW has 3/4 of my modest resource committed to it. Some points, fwiw. I am a physicist, so can perhaps assess things at least a little. So, OK, the project is in a validation stage. Your explanation of Travis' approach shows a solid approach - start with a coarse check and then tune up going forward. But your explanation of what Nathan just did fits with the recent postings and my criticism ("dribble"?) - he certainly appears to have jumped the gun from a new coarse protocol directly to a very finely tuned protocol. You are correct that I'm not in a position to know whether that's scientifically driven and therefore cost-justified. But the circumstantial evidence based upon recent postings is that the decision was driven more by server considerations than science considerations, because a "scientific method" approach would be expected to have been a step-wise, incremental one (viz. Travis' approach), not a sudden jump at the beginning. Yes, he might have wanted to go ahead and probe the high resolution, but the postings belie a different motivation, and to that extent it is fair to challenge if/why the science appears to have taken a back seat to the server. 'nuff said about the project's execution. What I do appreciate, as I indicated, is your (in the plural) spirited support for MW, and your commitment to trust the project scientists and to stick with them. I accordingly plan to do likewise. It will be fun to follow the project's success. Thanks. |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
Guidence from Project Team Requested
(Message 4243)
Posted 19 Jul 2008 by Bill & Patsy Post: ...So yes, the extra time spent has a definite value. :) Oh really! What is that "definite value"? If the computation time is increased by a factor of 30 or 60 (for example), is the "definite value" increased by 30 or 60? And if the computation time is increased by a factor of 30 or 60, the available computing resources (in terms of throughput) for Milky Way have been reduced by a factor of 30 or 60. What is the "definite value" of reducing the computing resources by 30 or 60? Is the increased accuracy 30 or 60 times more valuable? Seems highly unlikely or the project scientists would have increased the accuracy long ago. That they didn't do so before shows that your so-called "definite value" is small indeed. A modest increase in accuracy could have been credible. But be clear about what's actually happening here. It's not much about the science. Rather, resources are now being largely wasted and accuracy is being "tuned" in order to relieve pressure on the server. There's little "definite value" in that. |
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Message boards :
Number crunching :
No new WU
(Message 4048)
Posted 13 Jul 2008 by Bill & Patsy Post: Awhile back wasn't there a mention of moving to a faster server? And what about longer wu's? That would certain help the curret slow servers. Thanks for the tip. I'm new to Milky Way and didn't realize they are so cynical. I volunteer my computer time to try to help worthy scientific causes, not to be a target for sneers and laughter. Looks like this is a project I should detach from. Thanks for the helpful tip. |
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