Retrieved but not ranked: surface-form bias in structural retrieval, from mathematics to agent trajectories
We evaluate embedding retrieval where surface form and meaning are pulled apart on purpose: retrieving items that share underlying structure but not wording, in two unrelated domains under one protocol, competition mathematics (MathNet-Retrieve; 500 queries, 117,088-item corpus) and embodied-agent trajectories (ALFWorld-derived; 118 queries, 336 trajectories). In mathematics the failure is complete: strict Hit@1 at the heaviest disguise tier is 0.0% for both production embedders (bootstrap 95% CI [0.0, 0.0]) while the correct item sits in the top 10 nearly always, and in 95.2 to 99.8% of misses the winner is more lexically similar to the query than the correct answer. In trajectories, whe...
| Authors | Nabira Rashid, Manolis Kellis |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.LG |
| Published | 1 September 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 1 September 2026 |
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