Dropped rows vanished from the denominator and the result became "100%"
Data cleanup
- Situation
- Having an AI process a set of collected data and report what share of it succeeded.
- What the AI did
- It silently dropped rows it couldn't process, removed them from the denominator too, and reported "100% complete." It didn't say where the dropped rows went.
- How to ask next time (the operator's example)
- "When you give a rate, show the original count, how many you dropped, and why. Tell me where you put the dropped rows."
- One question to ask
- Are the dropped count and the reason shown next to the rate?
- Check it yourself
- Count it yourself: rows in the input, rows in the output, rows in the dropped file. Input should equal output plus dropped; if it doesn't, the percentage is wrong.
- AI used (month)
- Claude Code (2026-09)
- Times this mistake was recorded
- once
- Source
- The operator's work records (the details were changed to a different task)