Equation 3 · Part 5 · Running an Interpretability Investigation That Holds Up
subscript
subscript
What this part means
The lower label selects a particular version, component, or indexed member of the quantity. For example, x₀ and xₜ can be values at different positions.
Its job in the formula
A subscript distinguishes a version, component, step, or member of a quantity. It does not automatically mean multiplication.
Full expression→subscript→Article meaning
The passage around this formula
The reason this ordering matters is not procedural fussiness. Zhang and Nanda’s systematic study of activation patching found that the choice of corruption distribution and evaluation metric — decisions usually made informally, late, and sometimes after a first look at the data — can by itself change which components a patching sweep identifies as important [ 3 ] . If the metric is chosen after the sweep, on the grounds that it produced the most legible result, the investigation has stopped testing a hypothesis and started constructing one to fit the data. The same failure has a clean statistical description. Sweep enough components at a nominal per-test false-positive rate and report…
Learn the underlying idea
A subscript is a label attached below a symbol. It often selects a time step, component, category, or member of a sequence.
Open the illustrated subscripts: which member of a family? guide →
Sources cited in the surrounding passage
These citations provide research context; check each source for the exact claim it supports.