arXiv:2602.07150cs.LGcs.AI2026-02被引 7

发现智能体评估结果受随机性影响大,单次测试可能误导结论。

On Randomness in Agentic Evals

  • 通过6万条轨迹验证,单次测试误差达2.2至6.0个百分点
  • 早期生成的微小差异会迅速放大为不同解题策略
  • 建议多轮测试+统计分析,避免误判算法进步

智能体系统在基准测试中通过与环境交互完成任务进行评估。多数论文仅基于每任务一次运行计算pass@1,假设其能可靠反映性能。我们通过在SWE-Bench-Verified上收集三模型两框架共60,000条智能体轨迹,检验该假设。结果显示显著方差:单次运行的pass@1估计值差异达2.2至6.0个百分点,即使在温度0时标准差仍超1.5个百分点。这一方差具有关键影响:报告的2–3个百分点改进可能源于评估噪声而非真实算法进展。通过逐标记分析,我们发现轨迹在前几百分比标记内即出现分歧,小差异迅速演化为不同求解策略。为实现可靠评估,我们提出三项实践:(1) 每任务采用多次独立运行估算pass@1,尤其在检测微小改进时;(2) 使用统计功效分析确定检测预期效应量所需的运行次数;(3) 考虑使用k>1的pass@k(乐观上界)和pass^k(悲观下界)以更全面刻画性能范围。尽管这些措施增加评估成本,但对区分真实科学进展与统计噪声至关重要。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Agentic systems are evaluated on benchmarks where agents interact with environments to solve tasks. Most papers report a pass@1 score computed from a single run per task, assuming this gives a reliable performance estimate. We test this assumption by collecting 60,000 agentic trajectories on SWE-Bench-Verified, spanning three models and two scaffolds. We find substantial variance: single-run pass@1 estimates vary by 2.2 to 6.0 percentage points depending on which run is selected, with standard deviations exceeding 1.5 percentage points even at temperature 0. This variance has critical implications: reported improvements of 2--3 percentage points may reflect evaluation noise rather than genuine algorithmic progress. Through token-level analysis, we show that trajectories diverge early, often within the first few percent of tokens, and that these small differences cascade into different solution strategies. To enable reliable evaluation of agentic systems, we recommend three concrete practices: (1) estimate pass@1 from multiple independent runs per task, especially when measuring small improvements, (2) use statistical power analysis to determine the number of runs needed to detect expected effect sizes, and (3) consider metrics like pass@k (optimistic bound) and pass^k (pessimistic bound) with k>1 to better characterize the full performance envelope. While these practices increase evaluation cost, they are essential for distinguishing genuine scientific progress from statistical noise.

智能体评估随机性基准测试统计可靠性

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