{"id":221,"date":"2025-08-13T07:46:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T05:46:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/?p=221"},"modified":"2025-08-13T07:46:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T05:46:09","slug":"dont-judge-your-open-loop-predictions-by-closed-loop-outcomes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/2025\/08\/dont-judge-your-open-loop-predictions-by-closed-loop-outcomes\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t judge your open-loop predictions by closed-loop outcomes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Many of us have driven vehicles with backup cameras that allow us to see where we would go if we kept the steering wheel at a particular angle. When the screen shows the lines colliding with an obstacle, we know we should <em>behave differently<\/em>: take this prediction into account and turn the wheel a different way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"585\" src=\"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/08\/image-1024x585.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/08\/image-1024x585.png 1024w, https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/08\/image-300x171.png 300w, https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/08\/image-768x439.png 768w, https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2025\/08\/image.png 1026w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Backup camera view showing vehicle trajectory.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">These lines are an example of &#8220;open-loop&#8221; predictions. In other words, they show what will happen if you didn&#8217;t use the output of the model (no feedback). In contrast, what actually happens is a &#8220;closed-loop&#8221; outcome &#8211; you are using all your information to avoid the collision.<br><br>I often hear people say that predictions were &#8220;wrong&#8221; because the bad outcome predicted didn&#8217;t happen. This is only valid if no corrective action was taken due to the prediction. <br><br>We should rather evaluate predictions based on experiments where we fix the inputs completely. If a predictive model is doing its job right, and you take corrective action, the worst predictions will never occur, because you used the model to predict and sidestep them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many of us have driven vehicles with backup cameras that allow us to see where we would go if we kept the steering wheel at a particular angle. When the screen shows the lines colliding with an obstacle, we know we should behave differently: take this prediction into account and turn the wheel a different [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[213],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-control"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sandrock.co.za\/carl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}