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B0.1 — Architecture crosses

36 of 172 configurations beat the hub ensemble. The best score is 0.883. The top five configurations fit separate models by target or pathogen. The stochastic trend decoder raises the score in all four one-factor comparisons. Interval coverage is below nominal levels.

Experiment and score

172 configurations × 3 seeds = 516 season-CV runs and 1,548 season fits. The suite includes six reference architectures, one-factor changes, two interaction panels, and independent-model and convolution controls. See the specification.

Lower scores are better; 1 means parity with the hub ensemble. The objective uses location-relative WIS, equal season weights, and 80% states/DC plus 20% US. The B0.0 results page uses a different score; the comparison below uses rescored B0.0 forecasts.

Ranking

Rank Configuration Combined Seed SD States/DC US
1 independent__encoder_mlp__fit_partition_target__epochs_100 0.883 0.025 0.906 0.793
2 independent__encoder_mlp__fit_partition_pathogen__epochs_300 0.895 0.032 0.917 0.806
3 independent__encoder_mlp__fit_partition_target__epochs_300 0.895 0.047 0.917 0.807
4 independent__encoder_mlp__fit_partition_pathogen__epochs_100 0.897 0.019 0.922 0.796
5 independent__encoder_multiscale_conv__fit_partition_target__epochs_100 0.909 0.039 0.925 0.844
6 local_mlp__exchange_joint_location_target__head_sharing_pathogen 0.911 0.035 0.921 0.870

Scores are means over seeds 42, 43 and 44. Seed SD describes variation across those runs; it is not a significance threshold for comparing configurations.

Combined score for all 172 configurations

Score distribution by reference family

Seed instability

Reference architectures

Reference Combined score Rank of 172
local_mlp 1.004 38
spatial_conv 1.034 56
target_multiscale 1.228 114
pathogen_multiscale 1.230 115
joint_multiscale 1.433 139
joint_trend 4.104 164

local_mlp has the lowest score among the references. These recipes differ in several settings, so their ranking does not isolate the effect of each setting.

One-factor changes

Each change is compared with its own reference. Negative deltas mean lower WIS. The table averages over the tested references, excluding joint_trend. These are descriptive comparisons; they do not establish effects across all architectures.

Factor Mean Δ Range Same sign
decoder_stochastic_trend +1.259 +0.10 … +2.34 4/4
encoder_mlp −0.324 −0.50 … −0.24 3/3
exchange_none −0.272 −0.29 … −0.26 2/2
encoder_conv −0.139 −0.22 … −0.04 4/4
ed_transform_linear −0.124 −0.42 … −0.01 5/5
noise_global −0.090 −0.20 … −0.01 3/3
epochs_100 −0.069 −0.11 … −0.04 5/5
head_sharing_pathogen −0.023 −0.02 … −0.02 2/2
exchange_pathogen_spatial +0.054 +0.03 … +0.08 2/2
ed_transform_fourth_root −0.127 −0.42 … +0.06 4/5
exchange_shared_spatial −0.094 −0.16 … +0.01 2/3
head_sharing_shared −0.080 −0.23 … +0.06 2/3
us_heads_separate −0.068 −0.22 … +0.04 4/5
lookback_26 −0.049 −0.29 … +0.19 4/5
count_transform_log1p −0.049 −0.22 … +0.09 3/5
lookback_8 −0.046 −0.31 … +0.17 3/5
dynamics_False −0.041 −0.13 … +0.03 4/5
shared_factor_True −0.030 −0.13 … +0.02 3/5
count_transform_sqrt −0.028 −0.14 … +0.15 3/5
annual_calendar_False −0.024 −0.30 … +0.24 2/5
location_embedding_8 −0.021 −0.12 … +0.08 3/5
encoder_multiscale_conv −0.017 −0.07 … +0.03 1/2
noise_global_local −0.009 −0.02 … +0.00 1/2
exchange_target_spatial +0.009 −0.26 … +0.18 2/3
width_128 +0.014 −0.25 … +0.37 2/5
exchange_joint_location_target +0.091 −0.10 … +0.33 2/3
head_sharing_target +0.101 −0.03 … +0.24 2/3

The trend decoder increases the score by 0.10–2.34 across four references. MLP encoders, no exchange, convolution encoders and linear ED transforms lower the score in each comparison where they were tested. Several other changes have opposite effects across references.

The joint_trend reference scores 4.104. Its best one-factor variant scores 1.559. No joint_trend variant with a legacy decoder was run, so that family's results do not isolate the decoder from the rest of the recipe.

Coverage and forecast horizon

On states/DC tasks, configuration-level 50% coverage ranges from about 14% to 45%; 95% coverage reaches about 86% at best. The hub ensemble achieves 50.4% and 90.4%, respectively, on the same tasks. Low coverage alone does not show whether interval width, forecast bias, or both caused the misses.

Quality pairplot

Coverage by target

States versus US

Skill by horizon

Training budget

Across six recipes with both epoch caps, raising the cap from 100 to 300 changes the mean score by +0.009 and worsens it in four cases. This comparison does not establish an optimal budget or rule out overfitting. B0.1 did not test a cap of 50.

Comparison with B0.0

The 180 saved B0.0 runs were rescored under the B0.1 objective without refitting. The B0.0 page retains its historical scores.

B0.0 (rescored) B0.1
Configurations 60 172
Best combined score 0.948 0.883
Median combined score 1.087 1.135
Beating the hub ensemble 10 (17%) 36 (21%)
Best states/DC · US 0.962 · 0.892 0.906 · 0.793

B0.1 has a lower best score and a higher median score. The suites contain different configurations and training settings, so this comparison does not attribute the difference to one model change.

Fan plots

Four-week forecasts at every third origin for the three leading configurations, each at its median-scoring seed, and the hub ensemble. Locations are the United States and North Carolina.

Order: influenza → COVID-19 → RSV; admissions → ED visits; oldest → newest season.

Influenza admissions, 2023-2024

Influenza admissions, 2024-2025

Influenza admissions, 2025-2026

Influenza ED visits, 2025-2026

COVID-19 admissions, 2024-2025

COVID-19 admissions, 2025-2026

COVID-19 ED visits, 2025-2026

RSV admissions, 2025-2026

RSV ED visits, 2025-2026

Assumptions and limitations

  • These are retrospective season-CV results, not prospective performance estimates.
  • The same three seasons were used to rank and select configurations. A selected model needs evaluation on data not used for selection.
  • Target availability differs by season. Three seeds measure only part of the uncertainty in performance.
  • One-factor effects apply to the tested reference and settings.
  • This rewrite retains the reported numerical results; it does not recompute scores.

Reproducing

The general procedure is in Postprocessing an experiment.

The B0.0 rescore under this objective, for the comparison above:

for d in data/experiments/b0-us-cross-4/*/s*/attempt-001/cv; do
  .venv/bin/python -m tapestry.evaluation.totals score --run "$d" \
      --frozen data/evaluation/b0_hub_comparison_q23
done

then rank those runs into data/experiments/b0-us-cross-4/ranking-newobjective/. manager rank cannot be used for B0.0: its scenario strings predate six fields added for B0.1 (head_sharing, annual_calendar, location_embedding, fit_partition, validation_members, weight_decay), so the runs are identified by rebuilding each scenario from its own manifest.json and filling those fields with the dataclass defaults, which describe what B0.0 actually did.

.venv/bin/python -m tapestry.models.manager rank -e B0.1
.venv/bin/python scripts/plot_b01_crosses.py -e B0.1 -r ranking-509b07b0d243

Ranking tables are in data/experiments/B0.1/ranking-509b07b0d243/ (configuration_ranking.csv, run_scores.csv, season_scores.csv, season_composite_scores.csv, manifest.json). The per-configuration calibration table behind the pairplot is saved alongside this page as quality-metrics.csv.

Log

  • 2026-09-17: standardized fan order with B1: influenza, COVID-19, RSV; admissions then ED; chronological seasons. B1 now uses this page's full saved-season fan calendar.
  • 2026-09-16: Shortened the report. Removed causal explanations not established by the comparisons, seed-SD decision thresholds, and repeated recommendations.