| # Conversion audit — rubric for annotators |
|
|
| **This is the audit the paper reports.** Three annotators, 248 items, independent, 2-of-3 |
| majority, Fleiss' κ reported. It measures the error rate of the conversion filter, which is |
| the instrument the whole open-ended corpus rests on. |
|
|
| There are **two passes**, and the order matters. |
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|
| 1. `annotate_<yourname>.json` — 248 items, the original question only. Do this first. |
| 2. `annotate2_<yourname>.json` — 152 items, with the rewrite shown. **Do not open this |
| until pass one is completely finished**, because it reveals which items the |
| filter kept, and pass one depends on you not knowing that. |
|
|
| The `annotate*` files are **read-only reading packages** — they are gitignored, so |
| anything typed into them can be lost. Type your answers into `verdicts_<yourname>.json` |
| (pass one) and `verdicts2_<yourname>.json` (pass two) instead: they list the same items, |
| by blind `id`, in your reading order, and they are tracked in git. Commit them as you go. |
|
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| **Do not open `KEY.json`, and do not discuss items with the other two until both verdicts |
| files are done.** Disagreement is the measurement; agreeing in advance destroys it. |
|
|
| Your rows are in a different order from the other annotators' — that is deliberate, so |
| that tiredness late in the file doesn't hit the same items for all three of us. Items are |
| identified by `id`, never by position. |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## Pass one — does the item convert? |
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|
| You are shown the **original** MMLU-Pro question, its options, and which answer is correct |
| — the same view for every item. You are *not* told what the filter decided, whether a |
| rewrite exists, or what the other annotators thought. Every item looks identical, |
| deliberately. |
|
|
| ### 1. `converts` — would this question survive losing its options? |
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|
| Imagine the options deleted and the question reworded to stand alone. **Would a knowledgeable |
| person give the reference answer, rather than a different, equally correct one?** |
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|
| - `yes` — the reference is the single correct answer. |
| - `no` — stripped of options it admits many correct answers, or stops meaning anything. |
| - `borderline` — you genuinely cannot decide. Use this sparingly. |
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|
| Two kinds fail whatever else is true of them: |
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|
| - **It excludes rather than identifies** — "which is NOT", "EXCEPT", "is false", "least |
| likely". Everything in the world outside the answer set answers it correctly. |
| - **The answer only means something beside the others** — "all of the above", "both A and C". |
| Exception: if the stem itself sets out the alternatives ("i) … ii) … iii) …"), an answer |
| like "i and iii" names real things and is fine. |
|
|
| Common failures: asking for one member of a large category ("an example of X", "a true |
| statement about X"); ranking the options ("best", "closest", "greatest"); an answer true among |
| these ten choices but false as a claim about the world; leaning on a unit or convention only |
| the options supplied. |
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|
| A superlative is not automatically a ranking — ask what it compares. "Which is the most |
| persuasive argument", with ten arguments supplied, ranks the list and fails. "Which best |
| approximates the ratio of nonterminal to total nodes in a complete K-ary tree", answer |
| "1/K", does not: the ratio has one value and "best approximates" hedges the rounding. If |
| the stem itself fixes the quantity, the superlative has nothing left to rank. |
|
|
| **Not failures:** asking for several things at once ("calculate the efficiency and the reheat |
| factor") — judge whether the answer is *unique*, not whether it is simple. Working the answer |
| out from figures the stem supplies. Clumsy phrasing, which a rewrite fixes. And the reference |
| answer's *wording* does not matter here — a later stage accepts any phrasing of the same fact. |
|
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| ### 2. `answer_stands_alone` — does the reference work as a grading target? |
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| **Judge this independently of question 1.** An item can have a perfect question and an |
| unusable answer; that combination is the reason this field exists. |
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| A grader will see the question, this reference answer, and a model's response, and must |
| decide whether the response is correct. |
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|
| - `yes` — the reference is a usable target. |
| - `no` — it is not, for one of these reasons: |
| - **units or magnitude stripped** — `1.12` where the question asks for a speed, and the |
| real answer is 1.12 × 10⁴ m/s. Fine as one of ten numeric options; meaningless alone. |
| - **a fragment** — `greater and grander`, which only completes the stem it came from. |
| - **it does not answer the question asked** — the question says "describe the differences" |
| and the reference is a single word like `Alcoholism`. |
| - **it names option labels** — "I and II only", "b and c are Hermitian". |
| - `borderline` — as above, use sparingly. |
| |
| MMLU-Pro option texts were written to be told apart from nine alternatives, not to stand |
| alone. That property does not survive conversion, and nothing in the pipeline checks it — |
| which is why we are asking you. |
|
|
| ### 3. `why` — one short clause |
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| What decided it. Half a line is enough: *"many true statements about X"*, *"units stripped, |
| answer is 1.12e4 m/s"*, *"unique: only one canonical answer"*. These are read when the three |
| of us disagree, so write the reason you would give to the other two. |
|
|
| ### Worked examples |
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|
| | question | reference | `converts` | `answer_stands_alone` | |
| |---|---|---|---| |
| | "Which of the following is NOT a phase of matter?" | `plasma` | `no` — excludes | `yes` | |
| | "Calculate the minimum muzzle speed for a shell to escape Earth…" | `1.12` | `yes` — determinate | **`no`** — units stripped | |
| | "Which of the following statements about photosynthesis is true?" | (a true statement) | `no` — large category | `yes` | |
| | "The boiling point of water at sea level is" | `100 degrees Celsius` | `yes` | `yes` | |
| | "According to Paley, what is the key difference…" | `greater and grander` | `yes` | **`no`** — fragment | |
| | "Which of these are noble gases? i) helium ii) nitrogen iii) argon" | `i and iii` | `yes` — stem lists them | `yes` | |
|
|
| --- |
|
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| ## Pass two — is the rewrite faithful? |
|
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| Only after pass one is finished. You now see the original question, its options, the |
| reference answer, **and the rewritten open-ended question the filter produced**. |
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| Pass one asked whether the item *could* convert. This asks whether it actually *did*. |
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| ### 1. `same_question` — does the rewrite ask what the original asked? |
| |
| - `yes` — a reader answering the rewrite would give the same answer they'd have given the |
| original. |
| - `no` — it drifted. Two ways this happens and both matter: |
| - **it was written from the answer** — the rewrite names a topic, property or scenario |
| the stem never mentioned, narrowing a vague question until the reference is the obvious |
| answer. "Which of the following is true?" becoming "Which statement about compact and |
| complete spaces is true?" is the type case. |
| - **it makes the question easier or harder** than the original. |
| - `borderline`. |
| |
| ### 2. `self_contained` — can it be answered with no options in view? |
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|
| - `yes` — everything needed is present. |
| - `no` — it still points at a list that is gone ("which of the following", "the statements |
| above"), or **context was dropped**: a passage, table, formula or case description the |
| original supplied and the rewrite left out. Watch for items that began "This question |
| refers to the following information" — if the passage is missing, the question is |
| unanswerable however well it reads. |
| - `borderline`. |
|
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| ### 3. `why` — one short clause, as before. |
|
|
| --- |
|
|
| ## Why the sample looks the way it does |
|
|
| 248 items drawn from five strata — kept by the judge, kept at re-score, dropped at re-score, |
| dropped at rewrite, and a **borderline** stratum of items whose re-score landed in bands 4–7. |
| The strata differ by orders of magnitude in size, and the small ones are over-drawn on |
| purpose, so **the raw agreement rate over these 248 is not the filter's error rate**; each |
| stratum is reweighted by its share of the corpus afterwards. |
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| The borderline stratum exists for a specific reason. The filter readmits a re-scored item at |
| 5 or above, a threshold inherited from the method we adapted. Reading the run's own stated |
| reasons, items scored 5 and 6 concede that the answer is not unique about as often as items |
| scored 4 — which are *rejected* — while items scored 8 and above almost never do. That |
| suggests the cut is in the wrong place, but it was measured by pattern-matching the model's |
| prose, which is not evidence anyone should act on. **Your verdicts on these 50 items decide |
| where the threshold goes.** They deliberately include items the filter both kept and dropped, |
| so please don't try to infer which is which. |
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| The sample is not a picture of the corpus and you should not expect your answers to look like |
| one. Do not track your own yes/no ratio: judge each item on its own and let the total land |
| wherever it lands. |
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|
