| # Executive summary |
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| All three automatic claims are independently verified for the paper's Bayesian |
| linear-regression setting. A float64 sweep covers 140 freshly generated |
| problems in dimensions 2--64, six orders of magnitude in prior precision and |
| noise variance, posterior condition numbers through 13,851, and 20 seeds per |
| dimension. Every theorem identity and direction test passes. Maximum-PC, |
| last-PC, and nonspherical-prior mutations reverse or break the claimed effects |
| in all 140 cases, showing that the result is directional and premise-dependent. |
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| Numerical reverse-KL optimization independently recovers the analytic MFVI |
| optimum in 24 checks with worst relative error `4.93e-7`. Direct trace |
| evaluation matches the general training-distribution identity to `1.21e-13`. |
| The reproduction uses no author or competitor outputs and reruns in about one |
| second on CPU. |
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| ## Scored-claim result |
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| | Claim | Result | Decisive evidence | |
| | --- | --- | --- | |
| | MFVI can overestimate predictive variance | Verified | 140/140 minimum-posterior directions; 140/140 maximum-direction reversals | |
| | Training-distribution predictive variance is lower | Verified | Exact signed trace identity, 140/140 checks | |
| | Overestimation follows data concentration | Verified | First-PC alignment error at most `1.33e-15`; two premise-changing controls | |
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| --- |
| <!-- trackio-cell |
| {"type":"figure","poster":true,"id":"cell_mfvi_poster","created_at":"2026-07-19T00:15:00+00:00","title":"MFVI predictive-variance evidence poster","pinned":true,"pinned_at":"2026-07-19T00:15:00+00:00"} |
| --> |
| ````html |
| <iframe src="../../poster_embed.html" title="MFVI predictive-variance evidence" style="width:100%;height:680px;border:0;border-radius:12px"></iframe> |
| ```` |
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