Case Study

Diagnosing a self-driving car pipeline.

Case context: A self-driving car uses a pipeline with three steps: Car Detection (A), Pedestrian Detection (B), and Path Planning (C). On a specific dev-set example, the car makes a poor path planning decision. You provide a "perfect" bounding box for Car Detection (A), but the final path is still incorrect. You then provide a "perfect" output for Pedestrian Detection (B), and the final path becomes correct.

Question: Based on the general error attribution procedure, what should the engineer diagnose as the cause of the poor path planning decision for this specific dev-set mistake, and why?

Sample answer: The engineer should diagnose Pedestrian Detection (B) as the cause of the error. The procedure dictates that if replacing A's output with a perfect one does not fix the system, you move to B. Since providing a perfect output for B resulted in a correct final path, it shows that if B had produced a better output, the overall system would have been correct. Therefore, the error is attributed to B.

Key points:

  • Component B (Pedestrian Detection) is the source of the error.
  • Providing perfect input to A did not fix the problem.
  • Providing perfect input to B fixed the overall system output.

Rubric: The response must identify component B (Pedestrian Detection) as the source of the error and correctly justify it using the logic of the error attribution procedure.

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Updated 2026-06-12

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