Prevalence Determines Precision:Silent Contamination in Detector-Defined Datasets — Paper

Abstract

Many ML datasets are constructed by running a detector, heuristic, or model over candidate pools; accepted items become labels. Dataset precision is then governed by true-positive prevalence in each pool via Bayes, not solely by detector quality. Using one instrument and period, we hold a detector-defined event dataset plus an independent official index labeling every detected item as real or phantom. One detector, three pools yield phantom rates 81.7%, 9.0%, and 0.0%. Transferring precision from the two high-rate pools to the low-rate pool predicts 0.955 versus measured 0.183, a +422% error; the Bayes expression predicts all three within 3.3%. The detected response curve is an exact convex combination of a true-event and a phantom component (residual 1.1e-16), with phantoms outnumbering true events 473 to 308, so contamination is a second signal with detector-inherited shape, not additive noise. Contamination direction depends on the estimator: on identical windows one statistic is diluted and another inflated because its denominator is also contaminated. A common normalization turns the estimator into a mean of ratios whose expectation need not exist; on the same 335 events it returns 0.40 where the well-defined estimator returns 0.10.

Authors 3

Jia Huang, Yankai Wan, Yangjun Ou

Specification

Official page: arxiv.org/abs/2609.11449
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh
Arxiv announce type: new
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh
arXiv id: 2609.11449
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh
Categories: cs.LG, cs.AI
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh
PDF: arxiv.org/pdf/2609.11449
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh
Primary category: cs.LG
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh
Published: 11 Sept 2026
Source:arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1observed 3 h agohigh

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T19

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3 h ago

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Authors: Jia Huang, Yankai Wan, Yangjun Ou

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Value	Valid from → to	Status	Source	Confidence	Extractor
2609.11449	11 Sept 2026 21:02 UTC → current	current	arXiv (Atom API + RSS)T1	high	deterministic

Claims are temporal and append-only: a new observation closes the previous claim (valid_to) instead of overwriting it. Conflicting claims from different sources are kept side by side and flagged — never averaged. Methodology →

11 Sept 2026
New paperPaperPrevalence Determines Precision:Silent Contamination in Detector-Defined Datasets
New paper: Prevalence Determines Precision:Silent Contamination in Detector-Defined Datasets
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Source	Document	Type	Tier	Last observed	Snapshots
arXiv (Atom API + RSS)	rss.arxiv.org/rss/cs.LG	feed	T1· Official	1 h ago	1

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