TRADRILL / GLOSSARY / TRANSMISSION CHAINS
What Is Evidence Entailment?
Category: Transmission chainsChinese: 证据蕴含
Short definition
Evidence entailment is a per-hop judgement of whether the quoted evidence entails the hop's claim — separately for the relationship and for the magnitude — where a magnitude counts as entailed only if the number appears in the quote or follows from two quoted numbers without assumptions.
What it means
A hop has a quote and a claim. Entailment asks the narrow question: if the quote is true, must the claim be true? It is asked twice — once for the relationship (does the passage establish that A supplies B, or that B's revenue depends on the segment?) and once for the magnitude (does the passage contain the number, or two numbers from which it follows by arithmetic with no added assumption?). Each answer is yes or no, with a reason that cites the passage.
The test is deliberately indifferent to how convincing the hop reads. Well-written analysis often smuggles in an inference — "a major customer" becomes a named one, "significant" becomes a percentage, a unit figure becomes a revenue share via an unstated price. Fluency is not entailment. The rule that the magnitude must be in the quote, or derivable from two quoted numbers without assumptions, is what stops the note from stating as sourced what is actually inferred.
The verdict is recorded on the hop and shown to the reader: entailed on both counts, on one, or on neither. A hop that fails is not deleted — it may still be a reasonable inference — but it is labelled, and it does not count toward the verified part of the chain. A note that publishes a partial verdict honestly is more useful than one that hides it, because the reader now knows exactly which link to press on.
What entailment looks like on the page
A hop that has passed the test carries these marks:
- A verbatim quote in the source's language, not a paraphrase.
- A relationship verdict with a reason that points to words in the quote.
- A magnitude verdict with either the number located in the quote or the two quoted numbers it was computed from.
- No unit conversion, price assumption or extrapolation between quote and number.
- A partial verdict when only one of the two holds, rather than a rounded-up pass.
- For automated checks, the note says whether a model assisted and whether a person confirmed.
Running the entailment test on a hop
Two questions, asked in order, each answered from the quote alone:
- 1.Read the quote without the claim; write down in your own words what it establishes.
- 2.Relationship: does that establish the hop's relationship type between the named source and target? Record yes or no and the phrase that decides it.
- 3.Magnitude: find the hop's number in the quote; if absent, look for exactly two quoted numbers that produce it by division or subtraction.
- 4.If the number needs a third input (a price, a conversion, an assumed share), the magnitude is not entailed — record no and name the missing input.
- 5.Record both verdicts with reasons; if a model proposed them, keep its reasons and mark that a person adopted them.
Frequently asked questions
Is a hop that fails entailment false?
No — it is unsupported by its quote. The claim may be true and provable from a different document. The right response is to find better evidence, or to keep the hop on the estimated track with the inference spelled out, not to delete it and not to pretend it passed.
Why is the magnitude rule so strict about assumptions?
Because every assumption is a place the number can be wrong by an unknown amount, and a reader cannot audit an assumption that is not written down. Restricting entailed magnitudes to quoted numbers and assumption-free arithmetic keeps the verified track meaning what it says.
Can a model do the entailment check?
It can propose a verdict with reasons, and the method allows that as long as the proposal is shown as a proposal until a person adopts it. What it cannot do is replace the deterministic checks — is the number in the quote, are the names in the quote — which are computed, not judged.
Related terms & reading
Related terms: Evidence pack · Magnitude two-track · Transmission chain · Confirmation bias
Keep reading: Can AI Review Your Trades Reliably? What It Can and Cannot Do
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