Case Study

The Shift in Field Photos

Case context: You manage a plant-identification app used by gardeners. The original dev/test set mostly contained clear photos taken in bright daylight. After a major product launch, the logs show that many users are uploading blurry images taken indoors under artificial light.

Question: What is the most likely problem with the current evaluation setup?

Sample answer: The dev/test set is no longer representative of the images the system now receives in practice. Because the evaluation data still mostly reflects bright, clear outdoor photos, it may overstate how well the model performs on the indoor, blurry images that are now common in real use.

Key points:

  • Original dev/test set mostly bright daylight photos
  • Real usage now includes many blurry indoor photos
  • Evaluation data no longer matches the operational data distribution

Rubric: Correctly identifies that the dev/test set is not representative of the current user input distribution.

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Updated 2026-08-12

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