Measured, a NaN weight behaved exactly as `0.0`:
weight NaN -> Ok, converged: true, 1 iteration, step (0.0, 0.0)
skill pi 0.027777777777777776, tau 0.0
weight 0.0 -> Ok, same skill, bit for bit
So a NaN arriving from a division or a parse was indistinguishable from
a deliberate zero, and the fit reported itself as cleanly converged.
Worth correcting an earlier description of this: the event does not
vanish. The member contributes nothing, which is precisely what weight
zero means, and that equivalence is what makes it undetectable rather
than merely wrong.
Zero and negative weights stay accepted. Both are expressible choices
about how much a member contributes, and tests/degenerate_inputs.rs pins
their behaviour deliberately; only values that are not quantities at all
are rejected. A test asserts they still ingest, so the new check cannot
quietly widen.
This completes the boundary: every malformed input that previously
produced a plausible answer — a one-team event, an empty team, a
non-finite score, a non-finite weight — now fails where it enters.
BREAKING CHANGE: an event carrying a non-finite weight returns
`InvalidParameter` instead of silently treating that member as weightless.
Refs #18
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
A one-team event reached `run_chain`, which builds one diff link per
adjacent pair of teams, leaving it to index `links[1..]` on an empty
vector. That panicked with "range start index 1 out of range for slice
of length 0" — from `History::add_events`, in a release build, through
entirely safe API.
An empty team was the quieter half of the same gap. It contributes no
performance, so a malformed event converged and handed back a finite,
plausible-looking posterior for whoever it was matched against. That is
this crate's characteristic defect: a public surface reporting a
constant that looks like an answer.
A non-finite score was the third. `converge` did report NonFiniteResult,
so it was detected — but a caller reading `current_skill` before
converging was handed `tau: NaN` with nothing to say so.
`NotEnoughTeams` and `EmptyTeam` already existed. They were checked on
the prediction paths and nowhere else, which is exactly why ingestion
could still manufacture the states they describe. The checks go in
`add_events_with_prior` alongside the tie check, for the same reason
that one is there: every ingestion route lands on it, so `record_winner`,
`record_draw` and `EventBuilder` inherit them rather than each needing
their own.
Also corrects documentation that had been stating the opposite of the
code since 8c087ad in 0.4.0. README.md and the `with_prior` /
`with_drift_scale` doc comments all still said competitor configuration
was "captured at first appearance" and had "no effect" on a known key.
It now applies whenever supplied and refits the whole history. A reader
would have concluded late configuration was impossible and built a
workaround for a limitation that does not exist. CI compiles README code
blocks but not prose, which is why it survived three releases.
The comment in tests/degenerate_inputs.rs claiming a one-team event was
"rejected for an unrelated reason" was wrong when written — it panicked.
Refs #18, #26
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
logaritmiskandClaude Opus 5