Abstention
A system declining to classify or answer when evidence is insufficient.
What Abstention means
It can reduce false claims while lowering coverage and user satisfaction.
Terms this definition uses
Related terms in Measurement and evaluation
How a measurement earns trust: evaluation sets, error rates, calibration, reproducibility, and the biases that make a number look better than it is.
AI answer reading · name confusion · hedged answer · Benchmark · Evaluation set · Golden dataset · Ground truth · Human evaluation · LLM-as-judge · Pairwise evaluation · Pointwise evaluation · Rubric · Inter-rater agreement · Accuracy · F1 score · False positive rate · False negative · True positive · True negative · Calibration · Confidence score · Coverage · Reproducibility · Repeatability · Variance · Confidence interval · Sample size · Sampling bias · Selection bias · Survivorship bias · Data leakage · Test contamination
Questions about Abstention
What is Abstention?
A system declining to classify or answer when evidence is insufficient.
Which area of the glossary does Abstention belong to?
Measurement and evaluation: How a measurement earns trust: evaluation sets, error rates, calibration, reproducibility, and the biases that make a number look better than it is.
← Coverage · Reproducibility →
See it in the full glossary · 772 terms across 19 areas.
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