The Same Lake, Twice
Hold a large colour photo of a mountain lake in one hand. In the other, hold a tiny black-and-white print of the same lake. The small one has far less detail, but you would never mistake it for a different place.
The last lesson made shorter by keeping fewer numbers. This lesson keeps every number, but stores each one with less detail. It is a different way to save space, and here it lost far fewer right answers.
Think of the photo again. Shrinking the print is like the last lesson: less picture. Printing it in black and white is like this lesson: the same picture, with less detail at every point. You will see below that one kind of detail was not needed at all, and one kind was needed more than it seems.
The Words You Need First
Bit. The smallest piece of computer memory. It is either 0 or 1.
Byte. 8 bits together. One byte can hold a whole number from -128 to 127 (when it keeps a sign, as here).
float32. The usual way a computer stores a number with decimals, like 0.0473. It takes 4 bytes. This is how Ollama gives you each number.
int8. A whole number stored in 1 byte. The "8" means 8 bits.
Binary. Keeping only 1 bit per number: is it above zero or not. That is the number's sign: plus if above zero, minus if below.
Scale factor. The number you multiply by to make other numbers bigger or smaller.
Rescore. Check a short list of results again, this time with the full numbers.
Ranked first. The right lesson was the very top result, a stricter test than top 5.
Noise. Small differences that happen by chance. With 470 questions, one question either way can change from rounding alone.