`h.event(1).team(["x"]).team(["y"]).ranking([0, 1]);` without the
terminal `.commit()` was a silent no-op: no warning, no error, and the
next thing the caller does is converge an empty history and read `None`
skills. `EventBuilder` already carried a `#[must_use]`; the value types
around it did not, so the same silence covered `Team::with_members`,
`Member::new`, `Outcome::*`, `Joint` and `Prediction::outcomes`.
`#[must_use]` now goes on the *types* rather than being sprinkled over
methods, which covers every constructor and builder setter at once and
gives the crate a rule where it previously had a list. Verified by
compiling a program that drops each one and reading the warnings back,
rather than by assuming the attribute took.
Visibility, from #73: `Gaussian::damp_natural` was reachable from
outside the crate despite being an EP damping internal called only from
`src/factor/`. The stray `pub fn`s inside the private `time_slice`,
`key_table` and `matrix` modules are now `pub(crate)`, so their
visibility states what it means instead of relying on the module being
private.
`storage/mod.rs` and `factor/mod.rs` become `storage.rs` and
`factor.rs`.
Closes#67. Refs #73.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
Three of four corners of the evidence matrix existed. The missing one was
forward-only *and* key-restricted — which is exactly what per-competitor
prequential scoring needs, the intersection of the two workloads
`log_evidence_for` and `filtered_log_evidence` are each documented for.
`filtered_log_evidence_for` fills it. It is not
`log_evidence_internal(true, targets)`: that path selects `skill.forward`
as the prior, which stops being a filtering quantity once `iteration`
has run a backward sweep. It goes through `filtered_pass` like its
unrestricted sibling, with the restriction applied to which events are
*scored*, never to which are *run* — so it is a held-out score under the
real history, not a score under a counterfactual one where nobody else
played.
Key resolution for both `*_for` accessors now shares `resolve_targets`,
so they cannot drift apart on how an unknown key is reported.
`current_skills` is the plural of `current_skill`. Building a
leaderboard previously meant materialising every competitor's full
smoothed curve via `learning_curves` and reading the last point of each.
Tests carry controls in both directions: naming every competitor must
recover the unrestricted value (catching a filter that drops too much),
and the restricted forward-only value must differ from the restricted
smoothed one (catching an alias).
Refs #70.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
Two accessors answered a question about a key the history had never seen
with a well-formed value indistinguishable from a real answer.
`log_evidence_for` filter_map'd unknown keys away. An empty target list
means "no restriction" downstream, so a list of *entirely* unknown keys
returned the whole-history evidence: measured on a two-cohort fixture,
`log_evidence_for(["typo"])` returned exactly `log_evidence()`. On the
one workload it is documented for — leave-one-out cross-validation —
that is the un-held-out score, a plausible number that silently
invalidates the comparison it was computed for. It now returns
`Err(UnknownKey)` naming the offending position.
`learning_curve` and `filtered_learning_curve` returned an empty `Vec`
both for a typo'd key and for a competitor who is registered but has not
played yet. They now return `Option`, so `None` is "never heard of it"
and `Some(vec![])` is "known, no appearances".
Tests carry a control case in each direction, so they cannot pass by
everything returning the same thing.
Closes#66, closes#70.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
Three vocabulary collisions, from #75.
**"rating" meant three things**, one the opposite of the exported type.
`Rating` is documented as static *configuration* — "this returns what it
was told", against every other accessor's "what inference inferred". But
`quality`'s parameter was `rating_groups: &[&[Gaussian]]` and its prose
said "rating groups" four times, where "rating" means a *posterior* — the
one thing `Rating` is documented not to be. Two error messages used it
that way too.
So a reader who learned `Rating = config` passed `Rating` values to
`quality`, which takes `Gaussian`; and one who learned "rating = what
comes out" was baffled that `h.rating(&k)` is not their skill.
"rating" is now reserved for the type. `quality(teams: &[&[Gaussian]])`,
and "every rating is finite" became "every posterior is finite".
**"agent" was a private fourth name for a competitor** — ~200 identifiers
against 236 uses of "competitor", and it leaked into two `pub` signatures
on `TimeSlice`. Now that #73 has made those internal this is a pure
rename, so the crate has one word for the entity throughout.
**"player" survived in one public signature** — `free_for_all(players:)`
plus two doc lines. Renamed, along with three internal closure bindings.
Doc examples that use "player" as a *key* are left alone: that is a
user's data, not the crate's vocabulary.
The panic-message expectations in tests/quality.rs moved with the prose,
which is the point of asserting on message text — the tests caught the
rename rather than papering over it.
Not touched: "performance" (always skill widened by beta), "skill",
"member" and "team" are each used for exactly one thing already.
Refs #75
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
Documentation (#78). Every item below was measured against the code
rather than read:
- `expected_information_gain` and `predict_ranking` had `# Errors`
immediately followed by `# Preconditions`, with the error list stranded
at the bottom of the latter — rustdoc rendered a BLANK Errors section on
both. The heading now sits with its content.
- `predict_outcome`, `predict_ranking` and the free
`expected_information_gain` all omitted `GridTooCoarse`.
- `predict_margin` claimed `JointUnavailable` "if the LATEST slice holds
ranked events". Measured with an early ranked slice and a late scored
one: it fails. The condition is *any* slice.
- `add_events` documented three errors and can return five more; it also
claimed a weights `MismatchedShape` that is unreachable through it,
since weights arrive one-per-`Member`. That check belongs to
`EventBuilder::weights`, and the doc now says so.
- `converge` and `converge_partial` both omitted the drift-variance
`InvalidParameter`.
`History` gains a hand-written `Debug` (#76). Summarising, not
exhaustive — a derived one would print every competitor's skill at every
slice. It exists because without it a consumer cannot `#[derive(Debug)]`
on any struct holding a `History`, which is how both known consumers
store one.
`#[non_exhaustive]` on all 17 `InferenceError` struct variants and on
`Outcome::Scored` (#74). The enum carried the attribute; no variant did,
so adding a field to any of them — and downstream construction of any of
them — were both in the public contract. This crate added two variants in
two days.
The options structs are deliberately NOT sealed. `ConvergenceOptions` and
`GameOptions` are constructed by struct literal at 65 sites of which only
8 use `..default()`, and specifying all three convergence fields is a
natural complete statement rather than a partial one. That is a real
trade-off rather than an oversight, and it is left as a decision on #74.
Also spells `UnknownKeys::Reject` explicitly at both sites that
wildcarded it. `#[non_exhaustive]` on your own enum gives no exhaustiveness
safety net if you then match `_`.
Sealing the variants pushed ten test sites from constructing errors to
`matches!`, which is the better assertion anyway — an `assert_eq!` against
a constructed error breaks whenever a field is added, which is the exact
fragility the attribute exists to prevent.
BREAKING CHANGE: `InferenceError`'s struct variants and `Outcome::Scored`
are `#[non_exhaustive]` — downstream patterns need `..` and downstream
construction is no longer possible.
Refs #78, #76, #74
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
Trait coverage (#76), all additive:
History Debug is still absent - see below
HistoryBuilder + Debug (it derived Clone but not Debug)
Rating + PartialEq (Gaussian had it; Rating is a Gaussian
plus three scalars and had none)
Event/Team/Member + PartialEq (input value types with no way to compare
them, which made round-trip tests awkward)
ConvergenceReport + PartialEq
`#[must_use]` (#67). The coverage had no rule: `filtered_log_evidence`
had it and `log_evidence` did not; `rating` had it and `current_skill`
did not; `Rating::with_drift_scale` had it and `Member::with_drift_scale`
did not.
Now on the types — `EventBuilder`, `HistoryBuilder`, `Prediction`,
`Gaussian`, `OwnedGame` — which covers most method returns at once, plus
the `History` accessors individually.
`EventBuilder` gets a message, because a dropped builder is the worst
case in the set: measured, `h.event(1).team(["x"]).team(["y"]).winner(0)`
without `.commit()` leaves `time_slices_len() == 0` and every skill
`None`, with no warning at all.
And `ConvergenceReport`'s `#[must_use]` moves off the TYPE onto
`converge_partial`, where its stated reason is true. It read "from
`converge_partial` this may describe a fit that stopped at max_iter" but
fired on `converge` too — where that is false, since `converge` returns
`Err(NotConverged)` in exactly that case. So the crate's own front-page
example warned, and every quickstart had to write `let _ =`. Verified
from a consumer crate: `h.converge()?;` now compiles clean.
Marking the types made eight method-level attributes redundant, which
clippy's `double_must_use` caught — that is the type-level marker doing
its job, and the eight are removed.
Refs #76, #67
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
`TimeSlice`, `EventKind`, `KeyTable`, `CompetitorStore`, `Competitor` and
the `storage` module were all public and none was obtainable from a
`History` — `time_slices`, `agents` and `keys` are all private or
`pub(crate)`. `TimeSlice` was the worst: `new`, `add_events`, `iteration`,
`get_composition` and `get_results` were `pub` on a type you could only
build standalone and never feed back into anything.
Their sole consumer outside `src/` was `benches/batch.rs`, so a benchmark
was dictating six public types. It is rewritten against the public API: a
single-slice history's `converge` calls exactly the same per-slice sweep,
so capping at one iteration measures the same code path.
`N01` had zero references in the entire repository, including inside the
crate; removed. `N00` and `N_INF` are EP identities (`Add` and `Mul`) and
are now `pub(crate)` — a user reaching for `N_INF` as "an unknown
competitor's prior" would get an improper distribution whose `mu()`
silently reports 0.0.
Adds the accessors their absence forced people around, from #70:
`competitors()`, `competitor_count()` and `event_count()` (`size` had no
accessor at all). Answering "who is best" previously meant materialising
every competitor's full smoothed curve to read the last point of each.
`KeyTable::keys` now iterates the dense reverse table rather than the
forward `HashMap`, so `competitors()` yields insertion order rather than
per-process hash order — the same hazard as #62, caught before it could
reach a caller building a standings table.
Two `CompetitorStore` methods (`is_empty`, `iter_mut`) had no callers
anywhere and are gone; four more are now `#[cfg(test)]`, which is what
they always were in practice.
Worth recording a mistake: I first deleted `get_composition`/`get_results`
on the strength of a "never used" warning, and the build broke — the
warning came from the plain-lib target, where `#[cfg(test)]` callers in
history.rs are not compiled. A dead-code warning from one target is not
evidence about the others.
BREAKING CHANGE: `TimeSlice`, `EventKind`, `KeyTable`, `CompetitorStore`,
`Competitor`, the `storage` module, `N01`, `N00` and `N_INF` are no longer
public.
Refs #73, #70
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
`History<T: Time, ..>` has always been generic over the time axis,
`Untimed` has always been exported, and `Drift<T>` is generic specifically
so that "seasonal or calendar-aware drift is expressible without going
through i64". None of it was reachable from a downstream crate.
Every construction route pinned `T = i64`: `History::builder()`,
`History::builder_with_key()`, and the only `Default` impl on
`HistoryBuilder`. Its fields are private and it had no `new`. So all three
escape routes failed to compile, and a consumer with domain timestamps
had to convert to i64 — which is the exact thing the parameter exists to
avoid. One of `History`'s four type parameters was paid for at every
signature and could never be varied.
`Default` is now generic over `T` and `K`, `HistoryBuilder::new()` exists,
and `time_type::<T2>()` / `key_type::<K2>()` join `drift` and `observer`
as type-changing setters:
History::builder().time_type::<Untimed>().build()
History::builder().key_type::<String>().build()
HistoryBuilder::<Season, _, _, String>::new().build()
`key_type` replaces `builder_with_key`, which could not be turbofished —
`K` sat on the impl rather than the function, so callers had to spell
`History::<i64, _, _, String>::builder_with_key()`. 18 call sites across
15 files migrated.
tests/time_axis.rs is the part that matters. NOTHING in the repository
constructed a non-i64 history, which is precisely why this survived, so
the fix is only half done without a test that exercises the generic. It
defines a `Season(u16)` time type and a `SeasonalDrift` that accumulates
between seasons but not within one — the calendar-aware case the trait's
docs cite — and checks the whole path: fit, converge, and read a learning
curve whose times come back as `Season`, not as integers.
Two of the six tests are controls rather than assertions about output.
`Untimed` must ignore drift entirely, since elapsed is always zero, so
gamma 0.0 and gamma 5.0 must agree bit for bit. And a custom `Drift` must
actually widen a gap across seasons, or the test above would pass whether
or not the drift was consulted at all.
The README's ticked "Generalise a time axis" box is now true.
BREAKING CHANGE: `History::builder_with_key()` is removed. Use
`History::builder().key_type::<K>()`.
Closes#68
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
`gamma` enters only as `gamma * gamma`, so the sign was squared away:
measured against the old public-field form, `ConstantDrift(-0.0833)`
produced results bit identical to `ConstantDrift(0.0833)`. The sign was
neither rejected nor honoured — it vanished.
It could not be checked while the field was a public tuple position,
because there was nothing to intercept. Validating inside
`variance_for_elapsed` would have been worse: it runs in the sweep, so a
construction-time mistake would panic mid-inference, and `Gaussian::from_ms`
is a worked example of why that is the wrong place — rejecting NaN there
turned the NonFiniteResult reporting path into a crash.
So `ConstantDrift::new` is the only way in and it checks, with `gamma()`
to read the value back. 129 call sites rewritten across src, tests,
benches, examples and the README. The dated plan and spec documents under
docs/superpowers are left alone: they record what was built at the time,
and rewriting them would falsify that.
tests/constructor_validation.rs is the more valuable half. This defect
class was closed three times in one session and reopened twice, because
each fix validated the layer it had just touched and inferred the rest —
`HistoryBuilder`, then `Game`'s own entry points, then the constructors
beneath both. A per-site fix cannot notice the site nobody thought of, so
that file enumerates every public entry point taking a magnitude and
asserts each refuses negative and non-finite values.
It found an eleventh defect on its first run: `HistoryBuilder::score_sigma`
accepted infinity, because `inf > 0.0` is true and the assert only tested
positivity. Fixed, and its own `should_panic` message updated to match.
`Gaussian::from_ms` is deliberately exempt from the non-finite half, for
the reason above: a broken fit produces a NaN sigma legitimately and
`converge` must be allowed to report it.
The convergence-level drift-variance check stays and is now tested through
a custom `Drift` implementation, since `ConstantDrift` can no longer reach
it. That check is the only thing standing between a third-party `Drift`
and a NaN fit.
BREAKING CHANGE: `ConstantDrift`'s field is private. Replace
`ConstantDrift(x)` with `ConstantDrift::new(x)`, and `drift().0` with
`drift().gamma()`. `HistoryBuilder::score_sigma` now rejects infinity.
Closes#65
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
It proved less than it appeared to. `sweep_color_groups` takes its
`par_iter` branch only for colour groups of at least RAYON_THRESHOLD (64)
events, and a colour group is a subset of ONE slice's events. The fixture
built 20 slices of 10, so the branch was unreachable — the test named the
parallel path and ran the sequential one.
It also compared one competitor's curve out of forty, and never compared
log_evidence, final_step or iterations.
The new fixture reaches the branch by construction: within a slice every
event uses a disjoint competitor pair, so greedy colouring puts all 96 in
colour 0. Competitors recur across slices, so the fit keeps temporal
coupling and drift rather than degenerating into independent duels.
Verified by instrumenting `sweep_color_groups`: 872 sweeps, one colour
group of 96 each, parallel branch taken all 872 times.
Worth recording how that verification went, because I nearly drew the
opposite conclusion. My first two instrumented runs printed nothing and I
read that as "the branch is still unreachable" — but `cargo test` captures
stderr without `--nocapture`, so the probe was invisible, not absent. An
instrument that cannot report is indistinguishable from a negative result.
Now compares every competitor's curve plus log_evidence, final_step and
iterations, and asserts the curve count so it cannot silently go back to
measuring almost nothing. A companion test pins EVENTS_PER_SLICE against
the threshold, so shrinking the fixture fails loudly rather than quietly
returning the suite to the sequential path.
Cross-process coverage is separate, in tests/cross_process_determinism.rs
(#62) — an in-process test cannot see hasher-order effects at all, since
every sample shares one seed.
Closes#64
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
`ResolvedTerms::unseen` was a `HashMap<String, f64>` and three float
reductions iterated it. Addition is not associative and Rust seeds its
default hasher per process, so `posterior_of` returned different bits run
to run on identical input: measured over 40 processes, two distinct sigma
bit patterns, and five distinct values from `expected_variance_reduction`
spanning about 7 ULP.
A `BTreeMap` fixes it by construction. 40/40 identical after, 24/16
before.
The cross-batch conflict scan had the same cause with a different
symptom. It returns on the FIRST conflict, so hash order decided WHICH
competitor the error blamed — 15 different competitors named across 40
runs on identical input. The error fired every time; only its content was
a lottery, which sends a reader after the wrong key. Now scanned in
sorted order.
Magnitude was 1-7 ULP throughout, so no decision changes. The cost was
reproducibility: a golden test over these would flake at a low rate,
which is the worst kind of CI failure to diagnose.
tests/cross_process_determinism.rs re-executes the test binary and
compares bits, because an in-process test CANNOT see this — every sample
in one process shares one hasher seed. That is not hypothetical:
tests/determinism.rs compares four thread counts inside one process and
passed throughout while this was live.
Tuning that fixture took a measurement. Coefficients spread over nine
decades detected the bug in roughly one run in forty, because the small
terms fall below the running total's ULP and are absorbed whatever the
order. Comparable magnitudes keep every term able to change the last
bits: 5 of 5 attempts detected it, with 3 to 38 of 40 runs differing.
Verified non-vacuous by reverting the BTreeMap and watching it fail.
Closes#62
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
CLAUDE.md requires transcendentals to go through libm rather than std,
because std delegates to the system math library and the two disagree by
one ULP often enough to change an iteration count in a fixed point.
Three production sites did not:
factor/margin.rs:84 cavity.sigma().hypot(sigma) 12.136% of 1e6 inputs
factor/margin.rs:92 f64::MIN_POSITIVE.ln() 3.437%
factor/trunc.rs:98 f64::MIN_POSITIVE.ln() same
`hypot` is the material one: it is on the path of every scored event, and
its divergence rate is HIGHER than the 9.7% the rule cites for `exp` as
its own justification. The two `ln` calls happen to agree bit-for-bit on
this host, which is exactly the platform dependence the rule exists to
remove.
The `hypot` choice itself was right and stays — the comment above it
explains why, and it is measured: naive sqrt(a^2 + b^2) overflows to inf
at 1e200 and flushes to zero at 1e-200 where hypot does neither. Only the
implementation moves.
tests/libm_rule.rs enforces it. The rule was stated plainly in CLAUDE.md
and still violated three times, so prose is evidently not sufficient. The
test strips `#[cfg(test)]` items by brace matching, plus comments and
string literals so prose is not mistaken for a call, then scans for std
method spellings. `sqrt` is exempt: IEEE 754 specifies it, so std and
libm cannot disagree.
Confirmed non-vacuous by reintroducing the `hypot` violation and watching
it fail with the offending line, then pass again on restore. Two further
tests pin the stripper itself, since a stripper that removed everything
would make the guard pass on anything.
Closes#63
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
0.8.0 closed the sign-absorption defect at `HistoryBuilder::mu/sigma/beta`
and at both ingestion paths. It was still open one layer down, in the
constructors those paths call. Measured, all bit identical to their
positive counterparts:
Gaussian::from_ms(25.0, -8.33) == from_ms(25.0, +8.33)
Rating::new(_, -4.17, _) == Rating::new(_, +4.17, _)
ConstantDrift(-0.0833) == ConstantDrift(+0.0833)
sigma, beta and gamma enter only as squares, so the sign vanished without
comment. Worst of the set: `Rating::new(_, NaN, _)` reached `Game::ranked`
which returned **Ok** carrying `Gaussian { pi: NaN, tau: NaN }` — no
`converge` on that path to catch it.
`from_ms` and `Rating::new` now reject. `ConstantDrift` cannot: the field
is public and positional, so there is no constructor to intercept, and
sealing it would break every `ConstantDrift(x)` for a case whose resulting
model is perfectly valid. Documented instead. Its non-finite half IS
rejected — `converge` validates the drift variance each competitor
accumulates, which also covers a custom `Drift` impl.
Two things the tests caught that I had wrong:
NaN sigma must PASS `from_ms`. My first version rejected it, and two
existing tests went red immediately: a broken fit legitimately produces a
NaN sigma from `sqrt` of a negative truncated variance, and the design is
to propagate that to `NonFiniteResult`. Rejecting it turned the reporting
path into a panic inside inference. Written as
`sigma >= 0.0 || sigma.is_nan()` so the intent is explicit rather than
hidden in a negated comparison.
Very small sigma is also not rejected, and that is deliberate: `approx`
produces small truncated sigmas legitimately. `pi = 1/sigma^2` leaves
f64's range below ~1.5e-154 and `tau = mu*pi` overflows sooner, at a
threshold that depends on mu — so there is a band where pi is finite and
only tau is not. Both land on the existing point-mass representation.
Documented, including that such a Gaussian is not equal to itself and can
make two identical declarations report as conflicting.
BREAKING CHANGE: `Gaussian::from_ms` panics on a negative sigma, and
`Rating::new` panics unless beta is finite and non-negative. `converge`
returns `InvalidParameter` for a non-finite drift variance.
Closes#61
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
`v_w` returned `w` and let `trunc` form `1 - w`. `w` tends to 1 out in
the tail, so that subtraction lost about log10(alpha^2) digits — and the
quantity it was destroying is perfectly representable.
Two separate cancellations, fixed separately.
The non-tie half: `half_line_truncation` now returns `1 - w` computed
symbolically rather than as `1 - v*gap`. With `alpha*gap = 1 - inv^2*b`
the leading ones cancel on paper instead of in floating point. Measured
against the exact truncated variance:
alpha before after
1e6 8.9e-5 rel 0.0 rel (exact)
1e8 returns 0.0 0.0 rel (exact)
At 1e8 the old form gave `sigma_trunc = 0`, and `from_ms(mu, 0.0)` is a
point mass whose `mu()` is inf/inf = NaN. `beta(1e-8).sigma(1e-8)` with
priors 1000 apart went from Err + NaN skills to a finite fit.
The tie half is a different subtraction — `w = v^2 - u`, where both grow
as alpha^2 while their difference stays O(1). The existing escape hatch
could not cover it: it keys on `alpha * width >= HALF_LINE_WINDOW`, how
many window-widths from the mean the window sits, and a NARROW window
fails that however deep it is. Measured at alpha 1e6 with a 1e-6 window
it kept four digits and returned `1 - w = -2.4e-4` where the truth is
+2.8e-13. One step earlier it was quietly wrong instead: `1 - w = 1.0`
exactly, a truncation reported as a no-op, where the truth was 5e-17.
Over a narrow window the density is a truncated exponential in
`s = (x - alpha)/width`, whose mean and variance are closed forms, so
`v = alpha + width*m(t)` and `1 - w = width^2 * V(t)` with no large
subtraction at all. Validated against high-precision quadrature: v exact
to 4e-10, `1 - w` to 4e-10 across the region it is used in.
The crossover is on `alpha / width` rather than on either alone, because
that ratio is what says how many digits the subtraction has left — and
the approximation is most accurate exactly where the subtraction is
worst, since both improve as the window narrows.
Defaults are bit-identical (pi 0.02398318151216503 before and after).
Tests: the three reproductions from the issue, the narrow-window form
against pinned quadrature values, and a continuity sweep across all three
tie branches — a misplaced crossover is the real risk here, and a jump at
a boundary is visible even without pinning absolute values.
Closes#60
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
`quality()` computed `det(ata) / det(middle)` in linear space. Both are
products of `k - 1` diagonal entries, so they leave f64's range long
before their ratio does — and the ratio is the only thing the answer
needs.
Measured at the crate defaults: 150 groups correct at 8.45e-53, 200
returned 0, 250 returned NaN where the truth is 9.51e-88. With a small
beta it bit far sooner: at sigma = beta = 1e-3, 60 groups returned NaN
against a true 1.32e-9 — a value nine orders of magnitude inside the
normal range. Neither `quality()` nor `History::predict_quality` caps the
group count, unlike `predict_outcome`, so those are supported calls.
`Lu::ln_abs_determinant` accumulates `ln|diagonal|` instead of
multiplying, and the call site becomes `exp(e_arg + 0.5 * ln_ratio)`.
Verified against the closed form `(beta / sqrt(beta^2 + sigma^2))^(k-1)`
rather than against recorded output, across three parameter sets and
group counts to 300: every case now agrees to 1e-11 or better, including
9.88e-324 at 300 groups, which is subnormal.
Also documents the remaining panic: every rating at zero sigma with a
zero beta makes `middle` singular and `inverse()` panics. Documented
rather than converted — nothing is uncertain there, so there is no
distribution to take the quality of.
Closes#59
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
Each sample runs a full inference pass per outcome, and that is about
19x faster in release: 20 000 samples take 12.1s released against 23s
for 2 000 in debug.
`just test` runs three debug feature combinations and one release one, so
a fixed sample count pays the slow price three times and the fast one
once — exactly backwards. Scaling by `cfg!(debug_assertions)` puts the
search where it is cheap:
debug 1 000 samples 11.7s
release 50 000 samples 31.6s
Across the whole `just test` that is 67s against 70s before, for 25x the
samples. The debug run proves the sweep compiles and holds; the release
run is the one that actually searches.
Not moving the suite to release-only, which was the alternative
considered. `debug_assert!` is compiled out in release, and this crate
documents that as load-bearing — several defects have hidden there — so
dropping the debug runs would trade one class of coverage for another
rather than adding any.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
`grid_shape` asked for 12 nodes across the narrowest feature and then
clamped to MAX_GRID_POINTS with no detection that the request was not
met. Past `step/sigma ~ 1.7` the trapezoid rule stops resolving the
density, and the result is unbounded:
sigma_a step/sig_a P(a first) exact total
2.0e-3 0.86 0.515953 0.515953 1.000000
1.0e-3 1.72 0.517185 0.515953 1.002388
1.0e-4 17.17 2.791336 0.515953 5.410065
A probability of 2.79. Reachable through `predict_outcome` with a pinned
reference competitor — a documented pattern — where `predict_outcome` and
`predict_win_probabilities` disagreed 44x and `predict_outcome` was the
wrong one.
There is no useful answer on the far side of that cliff, so this reports
`GridTooCoarse` rather than guessing, and the message points at
`predict_win_probabilities`, which answers the same matchup through
adaptive quadrature and is accurate there to 1e-13. The floor is 4 nodes
per feature rather than the 12 requested, because the request carries
margin: measured accurate to 2.2e-12 at 1.4 nodes per sigma and wrong by
1.2e-3 at 0.7.
This also fixes the `ln k` ceiling violation. `expected_information_gain`
weights `probability * divergence`, so probabilities of 3.97 and 2.62
made it return 3.237828 nats against `ln 2 = 0.693147` — 4.67x over. The
crate's docs call that ceiling its sharpest test and record a prototype
once returning 4.77 nats; it was live again by a different route.
The new sweep then caught a second, independent defect: `kl_divergence`
returned NEGATIVE values, worst -5.55e-17, exactly one ULP of its
`- 1.0`. Rewritten as `0.5*(u - ln1p(u)) + gap^2/(2*var_p)` with
`u = var_q/var_p - 1`, so both terms are non-negative by construction.
It is also more accurate where it matters: at `u = 1e-9` the old form
returned 0.0 where the true value is 2.5e-19, and well-conditioned cases
are unchanged.
tests/prediction_bounds.rs sweeps rather than spot-checks, because a
single fixture cannot defend a bound like this — the previous check
passed throughout. It asserts the sweep still reaches the coarse-grid
regime, so it cannot quietly stop testing the case it was written for.
BREAKING CHANGE: `predict_outcome`, `predict_ranking` and
`expected_information_gain` return `GridTooCoarse` for matchups whose
performance sigmas are too far apart to integrate on one grid. They
previously returned wrong answers, including probabilities above 1.
Closes#55, closes#56
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
`time_expanded_joint` collapsed consecutive appearances only at
`drift <= 0.0` exactly. Anything smaller-but-positive got an explicit
`1.0 / drift` precision, which the matrix cannot hold: at `drift = 1e-16`
the entry is `1e16`, and `1e16 + 0.28` rounds back to `1e16`, so the
prior and the event contrasts are annihilated in the stored f64 before
the factorisation ever runs.
Measured, 8 competitors over 15 slices:
drift_scale before after
1e-6 1.3e-3 relative error exact
1e-7..1e-9 Err(JointUnavailable) exact
1e-10 12 200x TOO SMALL, as Ok exact
At 1e-10 the caller was handed sigma = 0.0055 where the truth is 0.6108
— a 111x overconfident interval, returned as a success.
This is representation, not conditioning. Solved in 200-digit precision
the same system converges smoothly onto the collapsed value and is flat
from 1e-16 to 1e-40, so the quantity is perfectly well conditioned. That
also rules out the obvious fix: symmetric (Jacobi) equilibration measured
30x WORSE, because the information is gone from the assembled matrix
before any solver sees it. The fix has to be at assembly.
The threshold balances the two errors that trade off. Ignoring a real
drift costs about `drift / V`; representing one costs about
`EPSILON * V / drift`. They cross at `V * sqrt(EPSILON)`, scaled to each
competitor's own prior variance.
Ordinary drift is far above it and unaffected — the default gamma
accumulates 0.0069 per unit time against a threshold of 1.0e-6 — and the
test asserts both halves: everything below the threshold reaches the
collapsed answer bit-identically, and a drift of 1e-2 still moves it, so
the test cannot pass by collapsing everything.
Also corrects the `JointUnavailable` message, which asserted "a
competitor has neither a proper prior nor any evidence" for a fixture
where every competitor had both.
BREAKING CHANGE: a drift variance below `prior_variance * sqrt(EPSILON)`
now collapses two appearances into one latent variable. Affected fits
previously returned a badly wrong variance or an error.
Closes#57
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
`tuple_max` compared with a plain `>`, which is false against NaN, so a
NaN accumulator was replaced by the next finite delta. The fold runs over
`TimeSlice::posteriors()`, a HashMap, so whether a NaN survived to `step`
depended on per-process hash order.
Measured before, four competitors in one slice with one pathological
pair, same binary and input, 30 separate processes:
16 Ok converged=true, iterations=1, a = Gaussian { pi: NaN, tau: NaN }
14 Err NonFiniteResult
After: 30/30 Err. A coin flip on whether a NaN fit was reported as an
error or as a successful, converged fit — inside the guard whose entire
purpose is "NaN is never convergence".
`f64::max` would not have fixed it. It also ignores NaN by design, which
is the same defect wearing a standard-library name, and a test pins that
we do not use it.
`Gaussian::delta` had to be fixed FIRST, and that ordering is the whole
subtlety. Two identical improper messages produced `(0.0, NaN)` — not
from `mu()`, which is guarded and returns 0.0, but from `inf - inf` in
the sigma component. That NaN is reachable in ordinary healthy inference:
once a pairing is more than about nine cavity-sigma apart the truncation
is a no-op and the chain compares one identity message against another.
Propagating NaN without fixing `delta` would therefore have turned
correct fits into NonFiniteResult errors. `delta` now answers the
identical-message case in natural space before touching the accessors.
My first version of the `delta` test asserted `mu()` was NaN. It is not;
the accessor guards `pi <= 0.0`. The test caught my own wrong premise,
and the doc comment is corrected to match.
BREAKING CHANGE: a fit that produced NaN in a non-final reduction
position previously returned `Ok` with `converged: true` and a NaN
posterior; it now returns `Err(NonFiniteResult)`. That was always the
documented intent.
Closes#58
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
I fixed this at `History`'s ingestion chokepoint and said the boundary
was complete. It was not. `Game` is a separate public entry point that
does not pass through that chokepoint, and every one of the same four
defects was still live there:
Game::ranked(&[&[a]], ..) -> PANIC at src/game.rs:317
Game::scored(&[&[a]], ..) -> PANIC at src/game.rs:317
Game::ranked(&[&[], &[a]]) -> Ok, finite posterior for the opponent
Game::scored(.., [NaN, 1]) -> Ok
The same panic, from safe API, in release. Fixing one path and
generalising from it is exactly the mistake that produced the
latest-slice joint bug: validating on the shape that cannot expose the
problem, then reporting the property as held.
`Game::validate_teams` is shared by `ranked` and `scored`, with the
non-finite score check in `scored` alongside it. Ranks need no equivalent
— they are `u32`.
`one_v_one` and `free_for_all` build their teams internally and are
unaffected; a test asserts all three well-formed constructors still
succeed, so the check cannot quietly widen.
BREAKING CHANGE: `Game::ranked` and `Game::scored` return
`NotEnoughTeams`, `EmptyTeam` or `InvalidParameter` for inputs they
previously panicked on or silently accepted.
Refs #18, #26
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
The two gaps #26 named that were never filled.
NonFiniteResult had no test at all — the name appeared in `tests/` only
inside a doc comment, and it is the sub-claim in that issue's title. It
turns out to be very much reachable, and from *finite* inputs: sigma at
1e300, beta at 1e300, sigma at 1e-300, score_sigma at 1e-300, and scores
at 1e308 all overflow inside inference, where the boundary checks cannot
see them. That matters because the failure is silent by default — NaN
fails every comparison, so a naive `step < epsilon` reads a NaN step as
converged, which is why the crate has `step_converged`/`step_is_finite`.
Pinned from outside, including that `converge_partial` does not launder a
breakdown into an `Ok`, and with a control asserting merely extreme
parameters still converge so the suite cannot pass by always failing.
Color-group disjointness was #26's fourth acceptance criterion and had
only five hand-written cases. Now a proptest over three shapes: a dense
pool where collisions force colors to multiply, a sparse one where most
events are independent, and repeated members within a single event.
Two of my first assertions were wrong about the code rather than the
reverse. A competitor named twice *within* one event is not a collision —
`color_greedy` collects each event's members into a set for that reason.
And contiguity is not a property of `color_greedy`: it holds only after
`recompute_color_groups` reorders events so each color occupies one
range. The test now asserts what is actually promised — that the reorder
is always *possible*, since the parallel sweep slices `&mut` sub-ranges
from those groups and overlapping ranges would be unsound.
Refs #26
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
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
Make a short fit an error, raise the default iteration cap, validate the
remaining HistoryBuilder parameters, add History::register and
History::rating, reject competitor config conflicts across batches, and
document what the joint's cost scales in.
Closes#50
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
A consumer measured an 8x difference in solve time between two fits over
the same events, the same slices and the same ~2,000 nodes:
career fit (gamma = 0) 787 ms
drifting fit (gamma = 0.15) 6214 ms
Entirely the collapse rule. A competitor with zero drift contributes one
variable however long the history, so a drift-free fit's joint is smaller
than a drifting one's by roughly the slice count — and to factorise, by
its cube. Choosing a drift configuration is therefore also choosing a
query cost, and nothing said so.
Documented on `Joint`, on `Joint::variables` and on `posterior_of`, with
the measurement. `variables()` is named as the number that decides
affordability, since it can be read before committing to a batch.
Also states the thing the consumer proposed as a future optimisation,
because it is already true: an absence is not an appearance, so a
competitor seen in the first and last of a hundred slices contributes two
variables rather than a hundred. The matrix is already as small as the
model allows on that axis.
tests/joint_handle.rs pins the mechanism — ten slices, two competitors,
twenty variables drifting against two at `gamma = 0` — so a change to the
collapse rule cannot quietly remove the property the docs now promise.
Refs #51
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
Three things #38 asked for, on a premise that had half dissolved. The
issue argued from "captured at first appearance", "missing it is silent"
and "missing it is permanent"; 8c087ad made configuration apply whenever
supplied and refit the whole history, so two of those are already gone.
What survived is the literal title — no way to say it before the first
event — plus the absence of any way to check.
`register(Member)` states configuration before anything is observed. It
takes the same `Member` ingestion takes, so there is one vocabulary
rather than two, and it creates the competitor immediately, which is what
makes it observable. It reaches a competitor first seen through
`record_winner`, the route #37 deliberately did not extend.
`rating(&key)` reads back what was stored. Every other accessor reports
what inference inferred; this reports what it was told, which is what
makes a configuration mistake detectable from outside the crate at all.
Conflicting configuration is now an error across batches, not only within
one. The `priors` map is rebuilt per `add_events` call, so a second batch
silently overwrote what a first declared, last-write-wins. That cut
directly against the invariant tests/ingestion_equivalence.rs exists to
protect: the same contradictory events errored when batched and
succeeded, order-dependently, when fed one at a time. Detection lives on
a new `declared` map on `History`, because a `Rating` cannot say whether
a value was chosen or inherited from the defaults — which is exactly the
distinction the check needs. Checked before anything mutates, so a
rejected batch leaves the history untouched.
`register` rejects a non-default `weight` rather than ignoring it. Weight
is per-event and has no meaning on a registration, and silently dropping
a field the caller set is the defect this whole area keeps producing.
The declarative `default_rating_for` closure is not here. It is the
better answer for ustat's actual case — thousands of keys matching a
rule, rather than enumerated — but it adds a `Fn` parameter to `History`,
which the issue itself flags as in tension with the crate's posture. That
wants its own decision rather than riding along.
BREAKING CHANGE: two different values for one competitor's `prior` or
`drift_scale` supplied across separate `add_events` calls now return
`ConflictingCompetitorConfig` instead of silently taking the later one.
Refs #38
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
The last three unvalidated setters, beside `p_draw`, `score_sigma` and
`convergence`, which all assert eagerly. Measured before choosing bounds:
beta = 0 -> works, pi 0.0211 (vs 0.0193 at the default)
beta = -4.17 -> bit-identical to +4.17
sigma = -8.33 -> bit-identical to +8.33
sigma = 0 -> NonFiniteResult, current_skill returns tau: NaN
sigma = inf -> same
mu = NaN -> same
So the bounds are not the obvious ones. `beta = 0` is legitimate and
meaningful — performance is then exactly skill, and the fit moves
measurably rather than degenerating — so zero is allowed and a test pins
that it reaches a different answer, since "allowed" would otherwise be
indistinguishable from "unchecked".
The negative cases are the quiet ones. `sigma` and `beta` enter inference
only as squares, so a negative value behaves as its absolute value and
the sign is dropped without comment. That is the same defect
`Member::with_drift_scale` already rejects, for the reason already
written there.
The non-finite cases are detected today — `converge` reports
NonFiniteResult — but a caller who reads `current_skill` first is handed
`tau: NaN`, so rejecting at the boundary is what actually closes it.
BREAKING CHANGE: `HistoryBuilder::mu`, `sigma` and `beta` now panic on
values they previously accepted, matching the existing behaviour of
`p_draw`, `score_sigma` and `convergence`.
Refs #18
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
`ITERATIONS` was 30, and overrunning it returned `Ok` with
`converged: false`. Both halves were wrong.
The cap is a runaway guard, not a budget: the sweep exits as soon as the
step falls below `epsilon`, so a high cap costs nothing on a history that
converges. Measured on one needing four sweeps, `max_iter` 30 and
100_000 both finish in 4 iterations and ~130us. So 30 could never make
anything faster — it could only stop a healthy history early, and it did:
160 events over 100 competitors already needs 42.
Not scaled to the history, because iteration count tracks how loopy the
graph is rather than how big it is. At a fixed 320 events over 40 slices,
varying only the competitors sharing them: 3 competitors needs 2_789
sweeps, 10 needs 1_068, 100 needs 90, 400 needs 2. Three orders of
magnitude on identical event and slice counts, so any formula in those
two numbers would be badly wrong on some real shape. A single value set
high enough that reaching it means oscillation is the honest version.
With the cap raised, stopping at it means something is genuinely wrong,
so `converge` now returns `InferenceError::NotConverged` rather than a
flag on a success. A short fit is wrong by a little — every rating
finite, the ordering sensible, nothing saying the numbers were still
moving — and a flag has to be checked while `let _ = h.converge()` is the
natural way not to. That is not hypothetical: it is how a real defect hid
in this crate's own test suite.
`converge_partial` returns the short fit for callers who want one. Only a
single existing test needed it, which is the evidence that a capped fit
is a deliberate choice rather than the common case.
Also corrects the `ITERATIONS` docs, which claimed convergence cost is
"roughly linear in the cap". It is linear in the iterations actually run.
BREAKING CHANGE: `History::converge` returns `Err(NotConverged)` where it
previously returned `Ok` with `converged: false`. Callers that want the
old behaviour should use `History::converge_partial`. The default
`max_iter` changes from 30 to 10_000, so a history that was silently
truncated will now converge properly and its numbers will move.
Closes#50
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
`EventBuilder` could set weights and nothing else, so `prior` and
`drift_scale` were reachable only through the typed
`Event`/`Team`/`Member` shape plus `add_events`. Which ingestion route a
competitor arrived through decided whether it could be configured.
`members(...)` takes `Member` values directly, so `Member`'s own builder
expresses everything. `team(...)` stays the common case.
One escape hatch rather than `priors` and `drift_scales` setters beside
`weights`, as the issue suggested and then argued against itself: a
parallel array per field means a parallel length check per field, and
each one is a new way to get the lengths wrong. `Member` already has a
builder; this just lets the fluent path reach it.
`record_winner`/`record_draw` are deliberately left alone. They are the
two-argument convenience path, and extending them would be a breaking
signature change. The issue's reason for wanting them extended has also
weakened: it said a competitor arriving through them was "permanently
stuck on the history defaults", and since 8c087ad that is no longer true
— a later `add_events` carrying the `Member` refits the whole history.
Measured, late configuration through that route reaches mu 40.000000000,
identical to configuring from the start.
Refs #37
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
Issue #5 asked for a decision, not an implementation: either flip rayon
to default-on, or record why the spec was deviated from and close.
Opt-in stands. The measured speedups are 1.0x realistic / 1.3x
pathological (#4), so default-on would cost every downstream user a
thread pool and a dependency for approximately nothing.
The condition the decision was waiting on cannot be met: #5 was blocked
on re-measuring after cross-slice dirty-bit skipping landed, and #4 was
closed by removing the inert slices_skipped field rather than by
implementing it. There is no forthcoming measurement to wait for.
Also corrects the spec's own reasoning. It cited an unsafe concurrent
write through SkillStore as a cost of going default-on; the crate is
forbid(unsafe_code) and the compute/apply split avoids that entirely.
The case for opt-in is the measurements, not a safety argument.
Closes#5
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
`posterior_of`, `posterior_of_at` and `expected_variance_reduction` each
built the joint precision matrix, factorised it, asked one question and
threw it away. The factorisation is O(n^3) in the history's appearances
and depends only on the fit, so a caller asking about every pair in a
standings table, every cell in a grid, or every candidate in an
active-learning sweep paid for the same factorisation once per question.
`History::joint()` returns a `Joint` handle that pays it once. Measured
on 1976 appearances, 90 queries: 68.4s one-shot against 745ms factorise
plus 93ms of queries — 81.6x, with bit-identical answers. Per query,
Criterion at 480 appearances: 9.0ms one-shot against 48us cached, 187x.
The handle borrows the history, which is what makes it correct with no
invalidation logic: the borrow checker forbids adding events or refitting
while it is alive, so there is no window in which the factorisation could
describe a fit that no longer exists. It also makes the lifetime of the
n^2 factor explicit rather than parking it in the history forever — at
4000 appearances that is 128MB, which is not something to cache silently.
Every question the joint answers turns out to be a bilinear form,
c^T A^-1 a = (L^-1 c) . (L^-1 a)
so no caller ever needs L^-1 c itself. Replacing the general solve with a
forward substitution drops the back substitution as wasted work, halving
a query, and removes a failure mode: a variance as `c . (A^-1 c)` is a
difference of products that can round negative, where `|L^-1 c|^2` is a
sum of squares and cannot.
The one-shot calls are unchanged in cost and now delegate to the handle,
so the two paths cannot drift apart. tests/joint_handle.rs asserts they
agree bit for bit, including at pinned times, under UnknownKeys::Prior,
and across candidate matchups.
Refs #51
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
`posterior_of` shipped in 0.5.0 reading a single slice. Measured against
a real Through-Time history that answers almost nothing: ustat's round
fit is 76 per-day slices whose last one holds a solo round, so 0 of 55
pair differences resolved and the single node that did was degenerate —
a one-competitor slice has no correlation to account for and returns the
marginal unchanged.
That was my mistake, and the fixture chose it. I validated against
single-slice histories, which is exactly the shape that cannot reveal
the problem. In a library whose premise is skill over time, competitors
are read at *their own* last appearance and those are different slices
by construction.
The joint is now time-expanded: one variable per appearance, linked by
the prior on a first appearance, the drift between consecutive ones, and
the within-slice event contrasts. Consecutive appearances with no drift
between them are the same variable rather than two joined by an infinite
precision, which keeps the matrix positive-definite when a competitor is
pinned with `drift_scale = 0`.
`posterior_of` now reads each competitor at their own latest appearance,
which is where `current_skill` reads them, so the two agree about which
posterior they describe. Adds `posterior_of_at(time, terms)` for a
comparison anchored to a moment, matching `learning_curve`'s reading.
Validated against a hand-written exact posterior for a two-competitor,
two-slice history — the precision matrix is spelled out in the test
rather than obtained from the crate, so it is an independent check
rather than a restatement. Also pinned: competitors last seen in
different slices now compare at all, means still agree with the
marginals, zero drift makes slice layout irrelevant, and more drift
widens a comparison across time.
BREAKING CHANGE: `posterior_of` and `expected_variance_reduction` now
consider the whole history rather than its latest slice, so results
change for any multi-slice history. `JointUnavailable` is now returned
when *any* slice holds ranked events, not just the last.
Refs #46, #47
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
Two decisions taken before cutting 0.5.0.
#42 — the `Schedule` trait was public API the engine never called. Its
only call site was `Game::custom`, itself `#[doc(hidden)]`, and
`EpsilonOrMax` was never constructed anywhere. Removing that surface
showed the problem was larger than the issue described: with `custom`
gone, the compiler found `Factor`, `BuiltinFactor`, `RankDiffFactor` and
`TeamSumFactor` all dead too.
`Game::run_chain` drives a local `DiffFactor` enum and bypasses the
whole T1 abstraction — it has done since it was written. So this is not
just an unused extension point but the machinery it was built on, and
`CLAUDE.md` was documenting it as live architecture.
Removed: `graph` module, `Schedule`, `EpsilonOrMax`, `ScheduleReport`,
`Game::custom`, `Factor`, `BuiltinFactor`, `RankDiffFactor`,
`TeamSumFactor`. `TruncFactor`, `MarginFactor`, `VarStore` and `VarId`
stay — inference uses those. The measurement behind choosing removal
over wiring is in #42: the within-game loop converges in 1 to 8
iterations against a cap of 30, so a `Residual` schedule has no headroom
to reclaim, and `Damped` already shipped as `ConvergenceOptions::alpha`.
#20 — `Outcome::winner` panicking on an out-of-range index. Kept, and
the reasoning is now on the method. It is the only constructor here that
validates, which looks inconsistent until you try deferring like its
siblings: `winner(5, 2)` produces ranks `[1, 1]`, an all-tied draw that
ingestion accepts without complaint when `p_draw > 0`. Asking "team 5
won" and silently getting "everyone drew" is the exact failure this
crate keeps removing, so the check belongs where the mistake is.
Adds `Outcome::try_winner` for indices that are computed or parsed
rather than written literally, following the `new`/`try_new` convention.
That is additive; the panicking form stays because every call site in
this repo, its tests and its README passes literals, where a `?` would
be noise.
BREAKING CHANGE: the `graph` module and everything it exported are
removed, as are `Game::custom` and `ScheduleReport`.
Closes#42. Closes#20.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
#49: `expected_information_gain` enumerates discrete outcomes, so a
consumer recording continuous scores cannot ask which matchup to run
next. The issue flagged this as possibly a research question, since
"expected variance reduction under EP may not have a clean closed form
even for Gaussian likelihoods".
It does. Observing a scored event is a rank-one update to the precision
matrix, so Sherman-Morrison gives
reduction = (c^T L^-1 a)^2 / (v + a^T L^-1 a)
for target functional c and matchup contrast a. Verified against an
actual refit on four candidate matchups: agreement to 1e-9 relative.
Two consequences worth stating.
There is no expectation to take. The expression depends on which matchup
is played but not on how it turns out, because for a Gaussian likelihood
the posterior variance update is data-independent. Pinned by
`the_outcome_does_not_change_the_reduction`, which refits with scores of
(3, 1), (100, -50) and (0, 0) and gets the same answer. The name keeps
the term the active-learning literature uses; no averaging happens.
It is also far cheaper than its ranked counterpart — one linear solve
rather than a full inference pass per possible outcome — because
`c^T L^-1 a` and `a^T L^-1 a` share the same solve.
`target` is deliberately the same linear-functional shape as
`posterior_of`, as the issue proposed, so the two share a concept rather
than inventing two.
The load-bearing test is the refit comparison. An acquisition function
is the archetype of a surface that returns finite, plausible, monotone
numbers while being wrong, and then quietly selects worse matchups
forever; ranking behaviour alone would not catch that.
Closes#49
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ
#48: every predict_* answers "who wins", and a consumer recording scores
never asks that. It wants the interval on the result, and having none it
hand-fitted a noise law whose fitted node weight came out at 0.0 — so
the quoted sigma was 5.83 whether the competitor had forty rounds or
none, against real residual spreads of 5.8 and 12.44.
`predict_margin` composes the three things that make a scored result
uncertain: the joint posterior over the competitors, their per-event
performance noise, and the observation noise on the score. It widens as
the model knows less — measured, sigma 2.48 against an opponent with
forty rounds, 3.38 against one seen once, wider still against one never
seen — which is the property the hand-fitted law lost.
It is a margin, not a score, and that is not a shortcut. Scored
ingestion reduces every event to `score_a - score_b` before inference,
so the absolute level is discarded: shifting every score in a history by
+100 or -1000 produces a bit-identical fit, verified. There is no
information from which to predict what a competitor will *score*.
Returning one would be a number derived entirely from the prior, which
is exactly the plausible constant this crate keeps finding and removing.
`posterior_of` now honours `UnknownKeys::Prior`, which gives #48 its
second requirement — "I have never seen this competitor, here is the
prior-informed answer". An unseen competitor shares no event with the
slice, so it is independent by construction and its variance is additive
rather than part of the solve.
Worth recording for expectations: for a *margin* the joint buys little
over adding marginals (2.4798 against 2.5112 here), because a margin is
a difference and differences are where the loopy underestimate and the
ignored correlation cancel. The gain here is having a predictive
distribution at all. `posterior_of`'s correlation handling earns its
keep on sums and single nodes instead — see tests/additive_model.rs.
Closes#48
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_011hcFjNDmHXZF8URGLku5zZ