Files
SirRoboGarage/common_libs/tm_diag
SirStone ab8d383121 Automata metrics: settledness alone does NOT separate learning from fidgeting
Added the four automata-level metrics to the TM diagnostics kit (settledness,
clause diversity, churn, vote disagreement) plus a state histogram, a per-input
confidence table and a one-line health summary, and validated them on a
learnable-vs-noise pair.

STATE CONVENTIONS, read off OUR code rather than from memory:
  range [-nStates, nStates] as int16; nStates = 64 for tm_pattern, 32 for tsetlin
  initial value 0 = the Exclude boundary
  INCLUDE iff state > 0; EXCLUDE iff state <= 0
  flip boundary sits between state 0 and 1; commitment = abs(st)/nStates in [0,1]

=== THE GATE, AND A RESULT THAT MATTERS ===
Case A (learnable planted rule) vs Case B (shuffled labels), 49 bits, N=64:
  metric                    A (learnable)     B (shuffled)
  settledness mean              0.970            0.719
  churn flip/sample        0.000055 FALLING  0.000788 FLAT
  clause-change/sample       0.00263 falling   0.0595 flat
  diversity (Jaccard)           0.176            0.014
  disagreement                  0.003            0.298
  verdict                    settling        mixed (NOT settling)

**SETTLEDNESS ALONE DOES NOT WORK.** On noise the automata still COMMIT (0.719) -
they just commit to the wrong thing. The decisive separators are **churn TREND
(falling vs flat)** and **vote DISAGREEMENT (0.003 vs 0.298)**. Had we built only
the settledness metric - the one that seems most obvious - we would have been
misled. That is now recorded in the README.

INERTIA SWEEP: A vs B separate at N=16/32/64/128. **Raising N raises A's
commitment but does NOT reduce B's noise-fitting** - so more inertia does not
rescue a noise-fitting TM.

=== REAL READING ON THE SHIPPED GUN, AND THE INFERENCE IT SUPPORTS ===
tm_pattern GF head over the DrussGT fixtures: settledness 0.484 (settling),
diversity 0.267 (moderate), churn 0.094/100 FALLING, disagreement 0.145
(coherent). **VERDICT: SETTLING** - not fidgeting, not collapsed. Constant inputs
flagged: 38/39 (the known never-written bits) plus 19/36/37.
Context: pooled warm accuracy 35.72% vs 34.24% majority = +1.48pp.
So: **the old gun was NOT failing because of inertia or instability - it settled
properly and its settled rules still barely beat a lazy guess.** Its settledness
(0.484) is LOWER than both synthetic cases (0.97/0.72), which is the signature of
WEAK OR CONFLICTING SIGNAL rather than too much inertia.
CONCLUSION: **N and s are not the observed bottleneck. The target/representation
is.** That is exactly why the new design changes the target and the label
pipeline rather than sweeping knobs - and it means we should NOT spend effort on
an N/s sweep expecting it to fix anything.

Also adds `diag_automata_validation.nim` (Case A/B/C + inertia sweep) and
`test_tm_automata_diag.nim` (55 pure checks); `test_tm_diag` 48 and
`diag_synthetic` 17 still pass, plus all other guards. acceptance_offline_vs_online
was NOT run (it needs a live battle and there is no tm_diag dependency).

Caveat: churn on the real gun is a PROXY (a tm_core retrain over captured samples
in live order) because the live gun exposes no per-sample state trace; the other
metrics are read directly off the exported teams.
2026-09-22 21:40:27 +02:00
..

tm_diag — the Tsetlin diagnostics kit

First-class, offline diagnostics for a Tsetlin-Machine head. Answers the two questions that clause-reading alone cannot:

Is the TM learning badly, or is the data bad?

Built before the new TM gun, so a bad design cannot hide behind the data and a bad dataset cannot hide behind the model.

Everything is pure and offline — no battles, no Java, no harness.

Files

file contents
feature_spec.nim FeatureSpec, describe, describeClause, draftTMSpec() (49-bit draft), tmPatternSpec() (40-bit shipped encoding)
tm_core.nim compact deterministic Granmo Table 2/3 multiclass TM (mirrors the tm_pattern core), introspectable clause layout
diagnostics.nim the seven groups (re-exports the two above)

Import everything with:

import tm_diag/diagnostics

Task 1 — named features / clause rendering

let spec = draftTMSpec()          # 49 bits, all one-hot
spec.nBits                        # 49
spec.describe(45)                 # "lat DEAD-ON -18..+18"
spec.describeLiteral(49 + 45)     # "NOT lat DEAD-ON -18..+18"
spec.describeClause(@[0, 45], 2)  # "IF dist-wall<50 AND lat DEAD-ON -18..+18 THEN class=2"
spec.describeClause(@[], 1)       # "IF TRUE (empty clause) THEN class=1"

A block is added with addBlock(name, count, bitNames?); a bit with no explicit name renders as blockName[k], and a single-bit block renders as its name.

tmPatternSpec() mirrors guns/tm_pattern.nim's tmBuildBits exactly. Its two last bits (UNUSED-38/39) are a real bug: tmBuildBits writes only 38 raw bits into an array[TM_NBITS=40, uint8], so bits 38 and 39 are always 0 and their negations always 1. The kit reports them as constant dead inputs.

Task 2 — the six groups

All functions take a trained TmMachine (or an externally supplied clause set) plus seq[DiagSample] where DiagSample.lits is the pos-then-neg literal vector and DiagSample.label the true class.

# build samples from raw bits
let s = makeSample(nBits, rawBits, label, order)

# 1. pre-flight DATA checks
let dc = dataChecks(labels, nClasses, threshold = 0.30)
#   dc.classCounts, dc.classShares, dc.majorityClass, dc.majorityShare,
#   dc.majorityAccuracy, dc.overThreshold, dc.flags
let sc = shuffledLabelControl(tmplMachine, samples)   # (acc, majority, ...)

# 2. clause introspection
let infos = clauseInfo(m, samples, spec)
let summ  = clauseSummary(infos)          # empty / neverFired / length hist
for c in topClauses(infos, 10): echo c.text, " votes=", c.votes
for cb in clauseBalanceByClass(infos, nClasses): echo cb
for cl in 0..<nClasses:                    # recover the class rule
  echo spec.describeClause(necessaryLiterals(m, samples, cl), cl)

# 3. per-feature contribution + DEAD-INPUT LIST
let contribs = featureContributions(m, samples, spec)
let dead     = deadInputs(contribs)        # weighted < 5% of top, or never used
let strict   = neverUsedInputs(contribs)   # appearances == 0
let consts   = constantInputs(samples, nBits)
for c in rankedInputs(contribs)[0..<10]: echo c.name, " ", c.weighted

# 4. accuracy diagnostics
let ad = accuracyDiagnostics(m, samples)
#   ad.acc, ad.majorityBaseline, ad.margin, ad.confusion,
#   ad.perClassRecall/Precision, ad.predMajorityShare

# 5. learning curve
let lc = learningCurve(tmplMachine, train, eval, nPoints = 10)
#   lc.points, lc.accs, lc.trend  ("flat" | "rising" | "rising-then-falling ...")

# 6. ablation hooks
let base = ablateBaseline(tmplMachine, train, eval)
for r in ablateDropAllBlocks(tmplMachine, train, eval, spec): echo r.name, r.delta
let rs = ablateScrambleFeature(tmplMachine, train, eval, spec, bit)

ablation retrains a fresh machine per variant (the strongest form of "does this input earn its bits"). Pass baselineAcc from ablateBaseline to avoid recomputing it per block.

Task 5 — the AUTOMATA level (settledness / diversity / churn / disagreement)

Task 2 reads the clauses. Task 5 reads the automata inside them: one automaton per input bit per clause, each holding a state that says how confident it is that its bit belongs in the clause. These are what tell us whether the TM is locking onto the enemy or just fidgeting, and whether the inertia N (the number of automata states) should go up or down.

State conventions — from the ACTUAL code, not the textbook

Derived from tm_core.nim and guns/tm_pattern.nim (tmEval, tmLearnDir, tmNewTeam, resetMachine):

property value
state range [-nStates, nStates] (int16); nStates = 64 for tm_pattern, 32 for tsetlin.nim
initial value 0 (both cores call it "the Exclude boundary")
INCLUDE state > 0 (tmEval / clauseLits)
EXCLUDE state <= 0
flip boundary BETWEEN state 0 and state 1 — the middle of the range
commitment(st) abs(st) / nStates in [0,1]: 0 on the boundary, 1 at either extreme

So a flip is exactly a change in the predicate state > 0.

The four metrics

  1. SETTLEDNESS — per clause and overall, the mean commitment and the fraction of automata settled at/above a threshold (default 0.5). High and rising as training proceeds is healthy; low means the clause is wavering noise. settledness(m, threshold), settlednessTrend(early, late).
  2. CLAUSE DIVERSITY — mean pairwise Jaccard of the included-literal sets, within the same polarity. Low-to-moderate is healthy; ~1.0 = all clauses are one rule in 50 hats; ~0 = memorising ticks. Empty clauses carry no rule and are skipped by default. clauseDiversity(m, skipEmpty = true), jaccard(a,b).
  3. CHURN — both levels, per training sample: the fraction of automata crossing the flip boundary, and the fraction of clauses whose included-literal set changed. High early and falling is healthy; flat-high = fidgeting; zero from the start = never learned. churnTrace(tmpl, samples, epochs, seed, window, shuffle). shuffle = false replays the given (temporal) order, mirroring a live gun.
  4. VOTE DISAGREEMENT — per class, over the samples where it casts a vote: the fraction of firing clauses whose polarity disagrees with the sign of the class's total vote. Low is healthy. voteDisagreement(m, samples).

The three readouts that make it readable

  • state histogram — the distribution of automata states across the range: stateHistogram(m, nBins), histogramText(h).
  • per-input confidence table — for each bit, the mean commitment of its automata (and a constant flag for zero-variance inputs): perInputConfidence(m, spec, samples, threshold), rankedInputConfidence(conf).
  • one-line health summary — healthLine(ad) gives settledness / diversity / churn trend / disagreement, each with its own verdict word (settling, fidgeting, frozen, coherent, ...), and automataVerdict(ad) reduces the trajectory to one word. formatAutomataReport(ad) prints everything.

API

import tm_diag/diagnostics

let ad = automataDiagnostics(tmpl, samples, spec,
                             epochs = 15, seed = 777,
                             settleThreshold = 0.5, nHistBins = 9,
                             window = 100, measureChurn = true)
# ad.machine, ad.settledness, ad.diversity, ad.churn, ad.disagreement,
# ad.histogram, ad.inputConfidence, ad.summary
echo ad.summary                  # one line
echo automataVerdict(ad)         # "settling" | "fidgeting" | "collapsed" | ...
echo formatAutomataReport(ad)    # the full readout

For a machine you already have (e.g. the shipped gun's exportTeams()), call settledness / clauseDiversity / stateHistogram / perInputConfidence / voteDisagreement directly and churnTrace on a fresh copy.

Validation — Case A (learnable) vs Case B (noise)

common_libs/tests/diag_automata_validation.nim uses the planted rule from diag_synthetic.nim and the SAME inputs with shuffled labels. Measured (nBits=49, 3 classes, 40 clauses, nStates=64, 3000 samples, 15 epochs):

metric Case A (learnable) Case B (noise)
settledness mean 0.970 0.719
settled fraction 0.999 0.799
churn trend falling (2.5e-4 -> 2e-6) flat (1.0e-3 -> 7.2e-4)
clause-change trend falling (0.011 -> 2.3e-4) flat (0.069 -> 0.057)
diversity (overall Jaccard) 0.176 0.014
disagreement 0.003 0.298
verdict settling mixed (not settling)

Case A settledness RISES 0.475 (early prefix) -> 0.970 (full). The pair separates learning from fidgeting: the decisive signals are the churn trend (falling vs flat) and disagreement (0.003 vs 0.298). Settledness alone is NOT enough — on noise the automata still commit (0.719), just to the wrong thing. Case C (a forced-constant bit) is flagged: perInputConfidence(...).constant and constantInputs both surface it. Note a constant bit can show HIGH commitment (one literal is always 1), so the constant flag is what disambiguates.

Inertia sweep (N = nStates, 10 epochs)

The validation also sweeps N to see whether inertia moves the metrics:

N Case A settled A churn A dis. Case B settled B churn B dis.
16 0.904 falling 0.003 0.720 flat 0.363
32 0.943 falling 0.000 0.700 flat 0.388
64 0.970 falling 0.003 0.715 flat 0.368
128 0.971 falling 0.000 0.660 flat 0.304

A and B are separated at EVERY N (churn falling vs flat, disagreement low vs high). Raising N only raises Case A's commitment (0.90 -> 0.97); it does NOT reduce noise-fitting in Case B. So inertia is not the discriminator the metrics identify — the churn trend and disagreement are.

Real reading — the shipped tm_pattern GF head

diag_tm_pattern_offline.nim over the committed DrussGT fixtures (automata read directly off the exported teams from tr_drussgt_vs_modularbot; churn measured on a tm_core temporal one-pass proxy, live-order):

  • settledness 0.484 (settling), settled fraction 0.453
  • diversity 0.267 (moderate) — positive 0.170, negative 0.322
  • churn 0.094/100 per sample, FALLING (0.00208 -> 0.00048); clause-change 5.31/100, falling
  • disagreement 0.145 (coherent)
  • verdict: settling — not fidgeting, not collapsed
  • constant inputs flagged: bits 38/39 (the known never-written ones) plus 19/36/37 in this fixture
  • context: pooled warm accuracy 35.72% vs the 34.24% majority = +1.48pp

The gun settles onto the within-battle labels but its settled rules barely beat the majority class, which points at the TARGET / representation rather than the inertia N. See the Task 5 report for the inertia discussion.

The default-off real-gun hook

guns/tm_pattern.nim gained only additive, default-off instrumentation:

g.diagCapture = true            # default false; no behaviour change when false
# ... replay ...
g.diagSamples                   # seq[TmDiagSample] (literal vector + label)
g.exportTeams()                 # read-only GF clause teams
g.exportRadTeams(); g.exportRevTeams()

To introspect an externally trained clause set:

let m = machineFromTeams(TM_NBITS, TM_CLASSES, TM_NCLAUSES, TM_NSTATES, TM_S,
                         g.exportTeams())

Running the demos / tests

nim c -r -d:release --path:common_libs common_libs/tests/test_tm_diag.nim          # 48 pure unit checks
nim c -r --path:common_libs common_libs/tests/test_tm_automata_diag.nim            # 55 automata-metric unit checks
nim c -r -d:release --path:common_libs common_libs/tests/diag_synthetic.nim        # Task 3 proof (17 checks)
nim c -r -d:release --path:common_libs common_libs/tests/diag_automata_validation.nim  # Task 5 A/B/C proof
nim c -r -d:release --path:common_libs common_libs/tests/diag_tm_pattern_offline.nim  # Task 4 real reading

See common_libs/tests/diag_synthetic.nim for the ground-truth validation and common_libs/tests/diag_tm_pattern_offline.nim for the real reading.