A dataset of expert-written prompts would help development of prompt generation systems

So far in my experiments with Using machine learning to generate good spaced repetition prompts from explanatory text, I’ve done a lot of casual, one-off evaluations. That’s fine in the tinkering phase, but if I get more serious here, I’ll want a dataset of “known-good” prompts which can be used to evaluate various ML-driven applications.

In the past year or so, I’ve done a bunch of adaptations of sections of textbooks (e.g. from University Physics - Young and Freedman). These would make good sources, although it’s a shame the relevant textbooks are copyright encumbered. It’d be better to do this exercise with an open textbook of some kind. (e.g. maybe one of Hefferon’s?)

Pipeline from my own prompt stream?

For that matter, now that I’m using Hypothes.is and my own prototype to do much of my prompt-writing about explanatory text, I should consider creating a pipeline which automatically attempts to generate prompts from the same highlights in the same textual context. I can evaluate them with GPT-4 can probably estimate whether two flashcards are functionally equivalent (assuming I get that to work). It’ll also help me determine how often it’s true that In prompt generation, LLMs often need extra hints about what angle to reinforce, since these prompts won’t have those special annotations.

Last updated 2023-07-13.