http://programmer.ie/tags/baselines/ Recent content in Baselines on Programmer.ie Hugo en-us Fri, 28 Aug 2026 10:35:00 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/dspy-from-first-principles/08-chapter/ Fri, 28 Aug 2026 10:35:00 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/dspy-from-first-principles/08-chapter/ <h1 id="you-cannot-optimize-what-you-cannot-measure">You Cannot Optimize What You Cannot Measure</h1> <p>Chapter 7 turned examples into data. We now have rows, labels, provenance, and splits.</p> <p>That does not yet give us evidence. It gives us the material from which evidence can be produced.</p> <p>The next step is a baseline evaluation:</p> <div class="highlight"><pre tabindex="0" style="color:#f8f8f2;background-color:#272822;-moz-tab-size:4;-o-tab-size:4;tab-size:4;"><code class="language-text" data-lang="text"><span style="display:flex;"><span>frozen program </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> + </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>frozen cases </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> + </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>metric </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> ↓ </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>per-case results </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> ↓ </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>aggregate result </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span> ↓ </span></span><span style="display:flex;"><span>failure inspection </span></span></code></pre></div><p>No optimization happens in this chapter. Evaluation answers one question:</p>