Validate Spotter
How to validate the results generated by Spotter
In order to help you understand how Spotter works, we provide a simplified syntax that allows you to validate the output generated by Spotter without learning the SQL syntax.
You can verify Spotter’s results by checking the query and by comparing to the previous step in the conversation.
Verify the query
Every answer generated by Spotter also shows the query in a simplified syntax. The simplified representation presents only the most meaningful information that you can validate easily.
Let’s take an example of the query. Say you asked a question: “What are the monthly sales for jackets in the southern region this year?”
The answer shows the query. A quick look at this query shows that the system has performed the following actions :
- Mathematical computation
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The mathematical computations are highlighted in green in the query syntax. In the example above, we can see that the
salescolumn is marked in green, which shows that we have computed the total sales. - Groupings
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The groupings are highlighted in blue in the search query. In the above example, we can see that
monthlygrouping is being used. The axis label also shows that thedatecolumn is used for this monthly grouping. - Filters
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The filters are represented in gray. The query also shows that the system has applied a filter on
item type=’jackets’,date=’this year’, andregion=’south’.
Glancing the above query quickly reveals that the system has done most of the things we asked for. However, it has not considered the southwest region as part of the southern region. We recommend that you always check the search data query, as it provides an easy way to validate all the important choices of the column values picked by the system and how it is using them to build the answer.
Validate the change from the previous step in the conversation
Spotter considers each new input in the conversation as a follow-up to the previous message. As your answer becomes more and more complex in the conversation or when you start the Spotter experience from a Liveboard, you don’t have to continuously validate the query for each answer generated by the system.
In the case of follow-up questions, we provide a quick summary before the answer which showcases what has changed from the previous step. For example, if we ask Spotter to “Show this for the last 3 months only” for the question asked in the previous step. Spotter shows that a new date filter, ‘date = last 3 months’, is added, and the previous date filter, ‘date=this year’, is removed. This helps you validate the changes made by Spotter at each step, simplifying the verification process for simple follow-ups.
