progress-curve-construction

name	progress-curve-construction
description	Build performance-over-time progress curves with inflection detection
execution	tactic
dependencies	{"sops":["baseline-synthesis","headroom-estimation","progress-curve-fitting"]}

Progress Curve Construction

Purpose

Transform historical performance data into temporal progress curves that reveal the rate of improvement, paradigm shifts, and saturation trends. Enables quantitative headroom analysis and identifies where the field needs breakthroughs vs. incremental refinement.

Stages

Stage 1: Time-Series Arrangement

Organize all historical scores into chronological sequences:

• Group by (dataset, metric) pairs
• Assign dates from paper publication or submission
• Track the SOTA frontier (envelope of best scores over time)
• Identify the method responsible for each SOTA advance

Yield: Chronological score sequences per benchmark.

Stage 2: Curve Fitting

Fit parametric models to the SOTA frontier:

• Logarithmic: diminishing returns pattern
• Linear: steady improvement
• Sigmoid: approaching saturation
• Stepped: punctuated equilibrium (paradigm shifts)
• Compute goodness-of-fit metrics for model selection

Yield: Fitted curves with parameters and confidence bands.

Stage 3: Inflection Point Detection

Identify moments where progress rate changed significantly:

• Sudden jumps (new method family introduced)
• Slowdowns (approaching ceiling)
• Acceleration (new paradigm unlocking faster progress)
• Correlate inflection points with methodological innovations

Yield: Annotated inflection points with causal attribution.

Stage 4: Headroom Estimation

Quantify remaining improvement potential:

• Human performance ceiling (where applicable)
• Theoretical bounds (information-theoretic, Bayes-optimal)
• Practical ceiling (best possible with current paradigm)
• Rate-based extrapolation (when will SOTA reach X?)

Yield: Headroom estimates with confidence intervals.

Minimum Yield

Metric	Floor
Progress curves constructed	2
Years of history covered	3
Inflection points identified	1
Headroom estimates produced	2

SOPs Used

• progress-curve-fitting (for Stages 2-3)
• headroom-estimation (for Stage 4)
• baseline-synthesis (for final integration)

Available SOPs

Optional, no fixed order; the final leaf is always a sop.

SOP	When to use
baseline-synthesis	Produce final structured baseline report integrating all analysis results
headroom-estimation	Estimate theoretical/practical ceiling vs current SOTA gap
progress-curve-fitting	Construct performance-over-time visualization data