Fig. 18: Plot depicting the fraction of the baseline R₉₉ achieved when optimizing for expected energy with no shot noise (red) versus optimizing for R₉₉ (blue).

Baseline R₉₉ (black) is given by the cubic parameter schedule, as described in the Results section. Even when shot noise is absent, optimizing for expected energy can increase the R₉₉ about a third of the time, as is evidenced by the fact that a third of the red points are above the black line. We performed this optimization using 100 function evaluations using the Nelder–Mead method, and due to imperfect optimization, a few blue points landed above the red curve. The x-axis is the graph instance number from 0 to 199, where graphs have been sorted according to the y-value of the red point.