arXiv:2607.04429cs.CLcs.AI2026-07

让大模型评估结果更可信,用统计方法验证差距是否显著。

evalci: A Python Library for Statistically Rigorous Comparison of Language Model Evaluations

  • 将每项评测结果转为带置信区间的科学结论,一步到位。
  • 在MMLU测试中发现3个排名差距不显著,原结论可能夸大。
  • 纯Python工具,兼容主流评测框架,适合严谨研究者使用。

当前大模型评估常仅报告单个准确率并宣称更高者更好,未检验差异是否由采样噪声导致。在数千项的基准测试中,温度采样使模型自身多次运行结果差异超过模型间差距,此做法过度高估了结论信心。尽管置信区间、配对显著性检验、功效分析等统计方法成熟,但缺乏可直接使用的标准工具。我们提出 evalci,一个仅依赖 numpy/scipy/pandas 的纯 Python 库,可将每项结果表一键转换为发表级声明(如:模型A胜过模型B,Δ=3.1分,95% CI [1.2, 5.0],配对置换p=0.002,n=1,319)。所有函数均经 statsmodels 或暴力穷举验证。以九个模型的 MMLU 准确率为例,重新分析发现8个相邻排名差中有3个在36次两两比较校正后不显著。evalci 已发布于 PyPI,源码见 GitHub。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

The dominant practice in language model evaluation is to report a single accuracy number per model and declare the higher one better, without testing whether the gap could plausibly be sampling noise. On benchmarks of a few thousand items, and under temperature sampling where a model can differ from itself run to run by more than the reported gap between models, this practice routinely overstates confidence in headline claims. The statistical machinery to fix this -- confidence intervals, paired significance tests, power analysis, clustered standard errors, multiple-comparison correction -- is well established, but no standard, pip-installable tool packages it in the shape an evaluation actually takes: a per-item results table. We present evalci, a pure-Python library (numpy/scipy/pandas only) that turns a per-item results table into a publication-ready claim -- e.g., "Model A beats Model B, $Δ=3.1$ pts, 95% CI [1.2, 5.0], paired permutation $p=0.002$, $n=1{,}319$" -- in one function call, with adapters for lm-evaluation-harness and HELM output. Every routine is validated against an independent reference (statsmodels, or brute-force exact enumeration) rather than only against itself. As a case study, we re-analyze a public comparison of nine language models' MMLU accuracy and find that 3 of the 8 adjacent leaderboard-rank gaps are not statistically significant after correcting for the 36 pairwise comparisons the ranking implies. evalci is available at https://pypi.org/project/evalci/ (source: https://github.com/Shreyaskc/evalci, DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21201815)

模型评估统计检验Python工具

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