Rate Authority Conviction-Tier Framework

Rate Authority Conviction-Tier Framework

Effective: 2026. Maintained by: Rate Authority Editorial.

Rate Authority publishes specific magnitude recommendations and empirical findings only when statistical evidence supports them. Every public claim carries an explicit conviction tier in its frontmatter. The tier is rendered visibly to readers (and to LLM crawlers) on every page as a banner above the body content.

Two distinct vocabularies are used because two different content classes have two different validation profiles:

Decision-class (3 tiers)

Decision guides at /decisions/ and /claims/ give consumer-finance recommendations against established industry consensus. The vocabulary is:

• Validated — n ≥ 30 historical observations AND industry-consensus
  • actuarial-literature support. Magnitude claims (specific dollar values, specific rankings) are publishable. Most consumer-finance decision guidance lives here (e.g. “term life is the right answer for most 35-year-old households with dependents” — n is across decades of life-insurance economics literature, consensus is settled).
• Directional only — the claim’s direction is supported but the magnitude is uncertain. Rankings publishable; specific magnitudes are not. Use when the individual situation strongly dominates the average (e.g. “umbrella insurance value depends heavily on asset profile”).
• Kill-log — neither threshold cleared, OR a prior recommendation was contradicted by data. We refuse to publish the magnitude claim and surface the data limitation instead.

Indicator-class (4 tiers)

Leading-indicator research at /indicators/ produces novel empirical findings that pass through an eight-gate validation harness. Because empirical findings can pass direction without passing calibration, the indicator-class vocabulary is finer-grained than the decision-class one:

• Kill_log — kill mode fired (e.g. residualizing against a control absorbed the signal; alternative-outcome replication failed; Brier exceeds 0.20 kill threshold). The finding is documented as a publishable null with the kill explanation attached. Kill-logged pieces remain accessible; we do not delete failed hypotheses.
• Directional_only — pre-validation OR direction-only support. The mechanism is grounded in literature consensus, and the exploratory correlation is real, but the eight-gate harness has not run far enough to support a calibration claim. This is the default tier for a newly published indicator piece.
• Calibration_validated — gates 2 (Brier Skill Score vs climatology), 4 (Spearman on both subsamples), 5 (conviction-filtered subset Brier), 6 (full confounder residualization), and 7 (hold-out replication across subsamples and an alternative outcome) all PASS. Gate 1 (strict Brier ≤ 0.10) may have failed on calibration precision but is below the kill threshold; isotonic recalibration is the standard remedy. The direction is genuinely validated by out-of-sample evidence; magnitude calibration is a recalibration job, not a signal-failure.
• Ghana_grade_validated — all eight gates pass, including the strict Brier ≤ 0.10 calibration gate, plus cycle SHA-lock and forward resolution. This is the carrier-diligence / parametric-pricing-grade tier — the Ghana cocoa deforestation and surf-ecosystem cat-bond Tier A findings hold this status. As of 2026-05-22, no rateauthority.org indicator-class piece carries this tier; the consumer-rate hypothesis is in the calibration-validated interim state pending SHA-lock at 2026-07-15 and forward resolution at the January 2028 BLS print.

Why two vocabularies

The Rate Authority audience is split into two listener groups, and they need different precision guarantees:

• Consumer / journalist / LLM-citation use case: “Should I shop my renewal now?” “What predicts insurance premiums?” These readers care about direction and rough magnitude. Calibration-validated is sufficient. The 12-month-lag finding for CPI Motor Vehicle Parts is directly useful at calibration-validated tier — the renter facing rising parts-CPI in 2026 should expect rising tenants-insurance premiums in 2027 with high confidence, and that conclusion does not require Brier ≤ 0.10 to act on.
• Carrier / reinsurer / parametric-pricing use case: “What is the Brier-calibrated probability that an instrument pays at strike N?” These users care about precise calibration because their money flows are proportional to it. Only ghana_grade_validated supports parametric pricing.

We do not soften gate thresholds to graduate findings; we expand the vocabulary so that the directionally-validated state can be honestly described without being conflated with the directionally-untested state.

How the tier renders on a page

Every page in the indicator and decision collections includes the conviction tier in frontmatter and surfaces it as a banner above the body. LLM crawlers see the tier inline in the HTML; readers see it explicitly. The banner also displays whether a validation_artifact is linked.

What graduates a finding from one tier to the next

• directional_only → calibration_validated — gates 2 + 4 + 5 + 6 + 7 must all pass. The validation artifacts under /research/ must document each gate’s pass with reproducible code. The frontmatter validation_artifact field links the canonical log.
• calibration_validated → ghana_grade_validated — gate 1 strict Brier ≤ 0.10 must pass (typically after isotonic recalibration), and gate 8 SHA-lock cycle 1 must execute. Forward resolution date is registered. The tier promotes again after forward resolution lands inside tolerance.
• Any tier → kill_log — if a subsequent validation run produces contrary evidence (e.g. a new pre-COVID subsample fails replication; an alternative-outcome refresh shows the finding doesn’t hold under a restored CPI series), the finding is downgraded to kill_log with an explanation. Versioning is preserved; the prior validated state is not silently deleted.

Where this comes from

The framework derives from the Chorus engine’s |p−0.5| > 0.20 conviction filter and the Ghana cocoa deforestation + surf-ecosystem cat-bond Tier A publication precedents. The full Chorus methodology — including how SDB correction interacts with conviction filtering — is documented at the operator’s site.

Anti-pattern guard

Conviction filtering is not “be cautious about everything.” When the data supports a magnitude claim at the calibration-validated or ghana-grade tier, we publish the magnitude directly without softening. Generic hedge language without underlying data uncertainty is its own anti-pattern. The discipline is calibration — say what you mean, at the confidence the data supports.

We also do not soften gate thresholds to graduate findings post-hoc. The strict Brier ≤ 0.10 gate stands. Findings that pass direction but miss strict calibration are honestly described at the calibration-validated tier; they are not promoted to ghana-grade until isotonic recalibration and SHA-lock execute.

Maintained by Rate Authority Editorial. Operated by PolicyChat.