| 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 |
