Equation 11 · Part 1 · Running an Interpretability Investigation That Holds Up
Symbol S
What this part means
S is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.
Its job in the formula
S is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.
Full expression→Symbol S→Article meaning
The passage around this formula
A specificity margin S that is small relative to the run-to-run variance means the intervention is detecting generic sensitivity to perturbation somewhere in the network, not the mechanism under test — which is exactly the failure mode the subspace illusion exhibits. Reporting alone, without the matched control alongside it, is reporting half an experiment.
Learn the underlying idea
A variable is a named place for a value. Its letter is a local label: x can mean position in one formula and a data point in another.
Open the illustrated variables: a letter stands for a value guide →
See this notation across published equations →
Sources cited in the article section
- [3] Towards Best Practices of Activation Patching in Language Models: Metrics and Methods ↗
- [4] Causal Scrubbing: A Method for Rigorously Testing Interpretability Hypotheses ↗
- [5] Is This the Subspace You Are Looking for? An Interpretability Illusion for Subspace Activation Patching ↗
- [6] Towards Automated Circuit Discovery for Mechanistic Interpretability ↗
These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.