Three Points of Accuracy for Twice the Cost
Last timeWhen It Will Not Stop
The four step version is right 81 times in 100 against 78 for one call, at twice the cost and 2.3 times the delay, and whether that is worth buying is arithmetic.
Both versions of this service now exist. One sends the whole job to a single
call, which gets 3,000 words of instruction, order record and policy and returns
- The other does it in four steps, sorting the request, finding the matching
order and policy, drafting the reply and checking the draft against the policy.
Somebody has graded the replies of both on the same hundred customer questions.
The single call version is right 78 times in 100. The four step version is right
81.
This is the only comparison that settles anything, and it is the one almost
nobody runs, because by the time the four step version exists there is nobody
left who wants the answer to be no.
The three numbers, in the units they are paid in
Both costs come from the same prices. Input is 3 units per million words and
output is 15. The single call sends 3,000 and returns 600, so it is
in and out, which
is 0.018, and it takes 1.4 seconds. Each of the four steps sends 1,500 and
returns 300, so each is 0.0045 plus 0.0045, which is 0.009 and 0.8 seconds, and
four of them are 0.036 and 3.2 seconds.
| version | right in 100 | cost a request | seconds | cost a day at 10,000 requests |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| one call | 78 | 0.018 | 1.4 | 180 |
| four steps | 81 | 0.036 | 3.2 | 360 |
Three points of accuracy, exactly twice the cost, and times
the delay. Every argument from here is about those three differences, and the
first thing to establish is whether the first of them exists at all.
The lesson stops here
10 more paragraphs to go
You have read the opening. The rest of the argument, the problems that check whether it landed, and the lines worth keeping at the end all come with a plan.
The first lesson of every course in the library reads the whole way through, free, so you can see exactly what the rest of them are.
See the planThe contentsThis is the reading half
Starting the course gives you your own copy of it. Every idea on every page has problems standing under it, marked with a reason rather than a tick, and any sentence you do not believe can be opened and argued with. None of that can happen on a page nobody owns.
The contents