ME.22:4 - Solution
Compare the description change at the receiving use, separate the available contrasts, and report only the difference that the observations warrant.
ME.22:4.1 - Fix the comparison question
Name the reader or consuming system, the Method or candidate account, the intended action or decision, and the result and stop the description should let the reader recover. Keep the task facts, relevant source conditions, tools and opportunity to act comparable.
State the content that must survive: the relied-on action claims, relations, applicability, uncertainty, result, stop and source-return information. Then state the representation difference, such as notation, arrangement, salience, navigation or interaction. Do not call a new condition or an unsupported diagram edge a form-only change.
Use A.6.3.RT for a changed representation scheme, or the applicable same-regime wording, narrative or coarsening result. Its preservation and loss answer helps establish the comparison inputs; it does not demonstrate improved performance. If the Method’s reusable semantics also changed, retain the ME.15 identity/variant question and bound the description comparison accordingly.
ME.22:4.2 - Choose the smallest informative contrasts
When only content changed in a fixed form, compare those two versions. When only form changed and the relevant content is preserved, compare those two forms.
When both changed and the receiving decision needs their separate contributions, use:
| Variant | Content | Form | What its comparison can address |
|---|---|---|---|
| A | Prior | Prior | The earlier usable answer and its limits. |
| B | Added or revised | Prior | B against A: the content difference in the prior form. |
| C | Same revised content as B | Proposed | C against B: the form difference at the revised content. |
| D, conditional | Prior | Proposed | Complete the crossed comparison if content/form interaction or transfer of the form effect across contents matters. |
The three-variant arrangement gives two local contrasts. It does not identify an interaction. Four cells make that question inspectable but supply neither replication nor causal identification by themselves.
If a cell cannot be constructed without changing another load-bearing feature, say so. A bundle comparison may still support a local choice. Do not describe it as an isolated content or form result.
ME.22:4.3 - Observe the receiving use
Ask the reader to obtain the first useful result, not to rate which document looks better. Recover:
- the applicable action or decision and the answer actually given;
- the result, stop or missing condition the reader identifies;
- unsupported inferences or lost distinctions that change the answer;
- the source returns needed to support or correct it; and
- the observed burden when time, source openings, attempts or other relevant effort were actually recorded.
When the question is how much selected structure the reader can extract, use C.2.8 U.ExtractableStructuralInformation. Identify the expressed account, its publication form and the reader, with selected relations, correctness criterion, prior knowledge, operations, help, access and budget qualified for this comparison. A qualitative account of recovered and missing relations often suffices. A number needs a declared structural scale and fixed units or denominator, not counts of words or arrows.
Keep a design estimate separate from an actual recovery observation or a mapped formal estimate. A response establishes recovery in that trial, not a maximum or population reliability. State what changed in content, what changed in expression, and what preparation, actual help or a source return supplied. Familiar relations can count; a reader’s independent correction of false or absent instruction is not credited to the expression. Missing basis is not zero. A successful changed-condition return supports its own condition rather than increasing the original amount.
These are candidate observations, not one universal score. Select those that can change this comparison. A source-opening count does not measure comprehension; shorter reading does not prove lower total effort; recognizing a prescribed action does not establish its correct enactment.
Choose readers and allocation to variants in proportion to the claim. A fresh probe withholds the other answers and the author’s preferred conclusion when they would teach the task. Repeated-reader comparisons retain learning and order effects instead of calling the reader fresh. In AI probes, keep the model, supplied context and available tools recoverable when they affect inference. Generalizing from a few AI answers to human performance is another unanswered question.
ME.22:4.4 - When testing a changed-condition return
Use this probe when the comparison needs to establish how a reader responds to a new fact. First retain the reader’s initial answer. Then disclose the changed source, missing fact or altered receiving use. Ask what must change and what remains usable.
A good return revisits the dependent claim rather than repeating the whole task or preserving an invalid assumption. Compare the actual revised answer, its source returns and its stop. If the changed condition changes the comparison question or available action set, identify that new question; do not present the two answers as observations under identical conditions.
ME.22:4.5 - Return a bounded revision result
State the inspected variants, the content/form contrasts they actually support, observations, losses, uncertainty and next decision. Distinguish a demonstrated local difference, no distinguishing result in this probe, an unavailable contrast and a confounded comparison.
Compare extraction effort and receiving value separately from structural amount through C.11.CRC and C.11. Retain the sufficient incumbent when the proposed change supplies no worthwhile gain.
Return a content correction to ME.8, a contradicted maintained claim to ME.12, and selection evidence to C.37 or ME.9. Use ME.11 for representative enactment evidence and ME.14 for a Method-worth decision. A causal claim needs its own justified research design and inference basis; neither this table nor an attractive explanation supplies it.
An ordinary comparison can remain short prose. When another decision will rely on it, retain the candidate versions, receiving use, observations and inference limits as an identifiable account, with the source conditions that reopen it.