--- title: "Calibration" summary: "A confidence score is calibrated when it matches observed reality — of the decisions returned at 0.95, about 95% should be correct — which is a different property from being accurate, and a much rarer one." canonical_url: https://entitybind.com/glossary/calibration last_updated: 2026-10-15 copy: full --- # Calibration > A confidence score is calibrated when it matches observed reality — of the decisions returned at 0.95, about 95% should be correct — which is a different property from being accurate, and a much rarer one. Canonical page: https://entitybind.com/glossary/calibration Last updated: 2026-10-15 Glossary · Measurement ## How to read this The definition as the field writes it comes first, weaknesses and all. What Entity Bind does about it comes last, in its own paragraph, so you can take one without the other. [Filed under measurement](https://entitybind.com/glossary#measurement). By [James Rooney](https://entitybind.com/about), founder of Entity Bind · Last revised 15 October 2026 ## What calibration means Accuracy asks whether the answers are right. Calibration asks whether the number attached to each answer means what it says. A model can be highly accurate and badly calibrated, in which case its confidence field cannot be used for routing, thresholds or automation decisions — which is usually the only reason it was exposed in the first place. Calibration is measured by bucketing decisions by their stated confidence and comparing each bucket's stated rate to its observed rate, on held-out data. Raw model log-probabilities are almost never calibrated out of the box; the standard remedies are Platt scaling, isotonic regression, or, where a system records outcomes over time, deriving the confidence directly from observed trial and error counts. The last approach is the one Entity Bind takes, and it has a property worth more than the value: the confidence values are pure functions of recorded trial and error counts with no tunable term, and the tests recompute every shipped value from its counts, so an edited constant fails the build. The confidence cannot quietly become a dial. The headline calibrated confidence is 0.9968. The nominal 95% Wilson lower bound of 1,190 historical prompt-v8 uncorroborated MATCH verdicts with zero recorded errors. The 2026-08-29 population pools six input shapes with repeated company families and calibration/evaluation overlap. Its independence and transfer to new customer inputs are unproven. Legacy replay cannot certify current calibration. Confidence bounds depend on the recorded evidence population; there is no universal score for every match. Read match_confidence_basis and the evidence. A 0.99 filter can return some v8 adjudicated matches while excluding valid identifier matches, so validate its coverage cost on your own inputs. The reject direction is measured separately. The historical prompt-v8 rejection population has 54 verdicts and four errors. Its bound authorises no accepted match; other non-match populations carry their own values. ## Where this shows up in Entity Bind Three pages where this term stops being vocabulary and starts changing an answer, a payload or a price. - [Calibration and confidence scores](https://entitybind.com/guides/calibration-and-confidence-scores): A confidence score is calibrated when it means what it says: of all the answers returned at 0.90, about 90% should be right. Most scores that reach an API are not… - [The accuracy method](https://entitybind.com/accuracy): Every published rate with the population it was measured over, its interval and its fixture — including the input shapes that fail. - [The API reference](https://entitybind.com/api): The REST surface: payloads, the decision outcomes, the error model, the usage block and the ceiling on the confidence field. The fastest way past a definition is a file: which of your rows are the same company, which of your existing matches we would not have made, and what we could not decide. [Start free →](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) ## The terms next to this one Each with its own sentence, because the next question is usually about the word beside this one. - [Expected calibration error (ECE)](https://entitybind.com/glossary/expected-calibration-error): Expected calibration error summarises miscalibration as the average gap between stated confidence and observed accuracy across confidence buckets, weighted by how many predictions fall in each. - [Confidence floor](https://entitybind.com/glossary/confidence-floor): A confidence floor is the score below which a system refuses to return a match at all, expressed as an acceptance contract rather than as a promise about accuracy. - [Wilson interval](https://entitybind.com/glossary/wilson-interval): The Wilson score interval is a confidence interval for a proportion that stays sensible at the extremes, which is why it is the right interval to publish when a system has made no observed errors at all. - [Abstention](https://entitybind.com/glossary/abstention): An abstention is a first-class 'we do not know' returned instead of a match: the record comes back unresolved, with a ranked shortlist, a typed reason and the column that would have decided it. - [Probabilistic matching](https://entitybind.com/glossary/probabilistic-matching): Probabilistic matching scores a candidate pair by weighing the agreement and disagreement of several fields into a single number, then applies thresholds to that number rather than to any one field. ## The other 13 terms on this shelf How you tell whether any of it worked, and which numbers may not be quoted without which other numbers. - [Precision](https://entitybind.com/glossary/precision) - [Recall](https://entitybind.com/glossary/recall) - [F1 score](https://entitybind.com/glossary/f1) - [B-cubed (B³)](https://entitybind.com/glossary/b-cubed) - [Pairwise metrics](https://entitybind.com/glossary/pairwise-metrics) - [Cluster metrics](https://entitybind.com/glossary/cluster-metrics) - [Recall@k](https://entitybind.com/glossary/recall-at-k) - [Expected calibration error (ECE)](https://entitybind.com/glossary/expected-calibration-error) - [Wilson interval](https://entitybind.com/glossary/wilson-interval) - [False positive](https://entitybind.com/glossary/false-positive) - [False bind](https://entitybind.com/glossary/false-bind) - [Over-merge](https://entitybind.com/glossary/over-merge) - [Fragmentation](https://entitybind.com/glossary/fragmentation) Previous, alphabetically: [Blocking](https://entitybind.com/glossary/blocking) · Next, alphabetically: [Candidate generation](https://entitybind.com/glossary/candidate-generation) ## Evidence basis Internal fixtures only. The historical 2026-08-29 per-tier recording covers 317 GB companies with identifier-rich arrivals seeding the catalogue first; the context tier includes country and registered-town prose. Its legacy replay has no full-prompt-verified calls and cannot certify current calibration. The September 5 CI reports cover 1,176 labelled pairs and 705 records over 250 companies using offline stubs. These are not independent customer holdouts or live production validation; the 99% minimum-input product target remains unmet. Scope is company and organisation identity only — not people, vessels, bank-account ownership, sanctions or emissions. Results may not be used for eligibility decisions about individuals, including employment, credit and tenancy. ## Start with your own company records. Create your workspace, verify your email and run your first company file. The Free plan needs no card. Create API keys in your workspace when you need an integration. [Start free](https://app.entitybind.com/app?signup=1) · [All 64 terms](https://entitybind.com/glossary) 300 credits. No card. For a guided review of your file, explore [the Merge Safety Sprint](https://entitybind.com/audit-pack). --- The 0.90 confidence floor. It is an acceptance contract, not calibration evidence: it says what we refuse to return, not how often an accepted match is right. Read it with the coverage it costs. Entity Bind resolves companies and organisations only. It does not resolve people, vessels, bank-account ownership, sanctions exposure, emissions or geolocation, and its results may not be used for eligibility decisions about individuals, including employment, credit and tenancy. This is the Markdown copy of https://entitybind.com/glossary/calibration, assembled from the same data the page renders and carrying every sentence, table row, figure and question the page's main content carries. The HTML page is canonical; it adds the layout, the navigation and the interactive parts (the ask panel, the forms), which a copy can name but not run. Every page on the site, with a line on each: https://entitybind.com/llms.txt.