Equation 9 · Why Average Success Rate Hides the Failures That Matter Most
What does this equation mean?
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.
This mathematical expression combines the displayed quantities; its precise role follows from the surrounding article text. Read the equation part by part below; each part has a contextual explanation and a link to its mathematical background.
Read it piece by piece
Symbol C
C is a part of this expression. Its role is fixed by the surrounding article and by the operations shown in the formula.
How to interpret it
Read this expression with the definitions, units, and assumptions supplied by the article.
What the article says around this equation
The success rate p says nothing at all about the second factor. Two agents can share an identical p of 0.99 while their conditional severity distributions, , differ by orders of magnitude — one agent’s failures cluster near the harmless end of C , the other’s failures put meaningful mass past . A leaderboard built entirely on p ranks these two agents identically. An operator who deploys the higher-severity one because its accuracy number looked the same has made a real decision without the information that decision required.
Sources cited in the article section
These citations give research context. Read each source to check which claims it supports.
Return to Why Average Success Rate Hides the Failures That Matter Most