English

Explaining the poor performance of the KASS algorithm implementation

Optimization and Control 2020-03-13 v1 Quantum Physics

Abstract

By investigating the code for the KASS algorithm implementation used in the paper "Exploring the quantum speed limit with computer games" [1, arXiv:1506.09091] by S{\o}rensen et al. (provided by the authors), we describe how the poor performance of the KASS algorithm reported in [1] is entirely caused by a simple sign error in a derivative calculation. Changing only this one sign in the KASS implementation, we show that the algorithm provides results comparable to all other algorithms considered for the problem [2,7], and performs better than all player solutions of [1]. Furthermore, we show that the player solutions were optimized with a different algorithm before being compared to the results from the KASS algorithm. The authors of [1] have acknowledged both findings. Finally, we show that in contrast to the claims in [1], the players did not explore two different strategies. In fact, all the players followed the same strategy.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2003.05808,
  title  = {Explaining the poor performance of the KASS algorithm implementation},
  author = {Allan Grønlund},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.05808},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T14:12:52.240Z