Re: [lojban] Historical "finprims" gismu algorithm weights and scores

["Bob LeChevalier, President and Founder - LLG" <lojbab@lojban.org>]

On 3/7/2014 8:22 AM, Riley Martinez-Lynch wrote:
> Thank you for the comprehensive reply!
>
>      >  1. Is the finprims document representative of the gismu-making
>     process
>      >     described in CLL and/or the "1987 gismu-remaking" process? Or
>     were
>      >     these separate efforts?
>
>     yes, "and", not separate, though a few words were added later than 1987
>     using later weights
>
> Does finprims include these later gismu?

Yes

>     I'm making a guess based on 25 year old memories, but I think we were
>     using integer arithmetic because it ran too slow otherwise (my brother
>     in law eventually recoded the inside loop in assembler, which sped
>     things up by an order of magnitude, but it was still incredibly slow by
>     today's standards, 5-100 minutes per source-word trial.)
>
> Great detail. Do you happen to remember what kind of computer/CPU you used?

Originally, a Zenith Z-100 MS-DOS machine, which ran at the same speed 
as an original IBM-PC.  I then got an enhanced chip that ran something 
like 20% faster.  A couple months later, my wife got a new MS-DOS box 
that was twice as fast as an IBM PC, and we were using both machines to 
do runs, close to 24/7.  It still took months.

>     The actual weights from the final version of the program were
>            Weight[1]  := 67; { Chinese   }
>            Weight[2]  := 36; { English   }
>            Weight[3]  := 33; { Spanish   }
>            Weight[4]  := 25; { Hindi     }
>            Weight[5]  := 24; { Russian   }
>            Weight[6]  := 15; { Arabic    }
>
> The use of integer arithmetic and halving before summing is one possible
> way these weights could have yielded 98.
>
>     Update: I have two "final" versions of the program, in source and
>     executable, but cannot recall what the difference is.  The first was
>     almost certainly used for all the 1987 prim runs, while we may have
>     used
>     the second one for the words added later.

I found a note that told me that the second program was not used except 
for experimental purposes.

>     I also think I have the full set of outputs of the data runs, which
>     gives the numbers that eventually went into finprims.  (There were a
>     couple of intermediate steps - finprims was generated by me manually
>     after all the word runs were made, and I had picked the "winners".)
>
>
>     If you are willing to wade into the old Turbo-Pascal code, I may be
>     able
>     to find it and send it to you.
>
>
> If you have a chance to send the pascal code, and/or the outputs, I
> would be very interested to see them. Is your brother-in-law's assembly
> code archived with all of this?

It is embedded in the program text.

Give me a few days.  I've got to get back to running the LLG annual 
meeting, which is in progress.  The output files look to be around 10 
Meg zipped, so I may just send you part of them.

lojbab

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