skills/paper-close-reading/references/artifact-reading.md

# Reading figures, tables, equations, and appendices

## Figures

- Identify axes, units, scale, legend, colors, panels, aggregation, and uncertainty marks.
- Compare the exact systems, datasets, or conditions represented.
- Report direction and magnitude only when visible or stated.
- Check whether the caption or nearby text limits the interpretation.

## Tables

- Identify dataset, split, metric direction, averaging, bold/underline conventions, and footnotes.
- Distinguish best result from statistically meaningful improvement.
- Check whether baselines use comparable data, compute, prompts, or external resources.
- Trace each headline claim to the exact row and column that supports it.

## Equations

- Define every symbol in context.
- State inputs, outputs, assumptions, and optimization target.
- Explain what changes relative to prior methods.
- Check boundary conditions, hidden normalization, and whether the implementation matches the written equation.

## Appendices

- Inspect appendices when the main text delegates prompts, hyperparameters, proofs, data details, ablations, or additional results.
- Do not treat an appendix-only qualification as irrelevant when it changes the main claim.
- Connect appendix evidence back to the main-text sentence it supports or weakens.