DYCK_REPLICATION_PLAN.md

Dyck-1 independent replication protocol

Locked before training at 2026-07-21T14:32:51+04:00.

Motivation

The discovery cohort (seeds 0–14) found a large far-OOD exact-match gain for p=.5 over p=0, but the primary paired test was marginal (t=2.247, two-sided threshold 2.145) and its balanced-accuracy sensitivity check did not clear the same threshold (t=2.127). Because the decision to collect more seeds followed that result, a pooled 30-seed test would inherit optional-stopping bias. Seeds 15–29 are therefore a separate confirmatory replication cohort.

Frozen experiment

• Task: Dyck-1.
• Arms: p=0 and p=.5.
• Training seeds: 15–29, paired across arms; no overlap with discovery seeds.
• Six isolated five-seed jobs: seed starts 15, 20, and 25 for each arm.
• Configuration: exactly scripts/dyck1_seedscale.py::job_config — two physical LoopDeepNorm blocks, R=8, recall-add, fixed schedule, n_ref=max, batch 128, AdamW LR 3e-4, Muon LR .01, 2,500 maximum steps, curriculum enabled, truncated-BPTT window k=8, and MPS/bfloat16.
• Checkpoint selection: best ID validation accuracy using seed 4242, unchanged from Stage 1a.
• Held-out evaluation: 2,048 shared examples per bucket, evaluation seed 20260721 (bucket-specific offset as implemented), inference R=8.
• All 30 runs will be trained and reported regardless of interim outcomes.

Confirmatory endpoint

The sole confirmatory endpoint is per-seed far-OOD exact-match accuracy on lengths 62–80. For each seed, compute p=.5 - p=0, then apply a paired, two-sided t-test across replication seeds 15–29 (n=15, df=14, alpha=.05, critical |t|=2.1447867). Replication succeeds only if the mean difference is positive and t > 2.1447867.

The replication means, mean paired difference, paired t-statistic, and decision will be reported regardless of direction. No task, bucket, metric, seed, or checkpoint will be excluded after training except a documented technical failure that prevents a checkpoint from being produced.

Secondary and descriptive analyses

• Far-OOD balanced exact match on the same replication cohort.
• Near-OOD (22–40), mid-OOD (42–60), and ID (2–20) exact match.
• Discovery (seeds 0–14) and replication (seeds 15–29) results side by side.
• Pooled 30-seed mean differences and 95% confidence intervals as descriptive estimates only; no pooled confirmatory p-value.

Any analysis not listed above is exploratory and will be labeled as such.