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Equation 3 · Shrink It, Train It Small, or Search for It: The Main Strategies for Small Models, Compared

What does this equation mean?

zsz_s

Read the formula alongside the article passage below. Each part has a deeper page with its role in the equation, the supporting passage and nearby citations.

the teacher’s and student’s output logits. Read the equation part by part below; each part has a contextual explanation and a link to its mathematical background.

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zsz_s

Symbol z_s

the teacher’s and student’s output logits.

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subscript

subscript

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.

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How to interpret it

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What the article says around this equation

where ztz_t and zsz_s are the teacher’s and student’s output logits, σ\sigma a softmax, T a temperature that softens the distribution, and y the ground-truth label. The second term is the entire point of the method: it transfers the relative probability the teacher assigns to every wrong answer, not just which answer was right, a far richer training signal per example than a raw label alone provides. That is the rationale, stated plainly by the paper that introduced it.

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Sources cited in the article section

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