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9 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
gbanyan 552b6b80d4 Paper A v3.7: demote BD/McCrary to density-smoothness diagnostic; add Appendix A
Implements codex gpt-5.4 recommendation (paper/codex_bd_mccrary_opinion.md,
"option (c) hybrid"): demote BD/McCrary in the main text from a co-equal
threshold estimator to a density-smoothness diagnostic, and add a
bin-width sensitivity appendix as an audit trail.

Why: the bin-width sweep (Script 25) confirms that at the signature
level the BD transition drifts monotonically with bin width (Firm A
cosine: 0.987 -> 0.985 -> 0.980 -> 0.975 as bin width widens 0.003 ->
0.015; full-sample dHash transitions drift from 2 to 10 to 9 across
bin widths 1 / 2 / 3) and Z statistics inflate superlinearly with bin
width, both characteristic of a histogram-resolution artifact. At the
accountant level the BD null is robust across the sweep. The paper's
earlier "three methodologically distinct estimators" framing therefore
could not be defended to an IEEE Access reviewer once the sweep was
run.

Added
- signature_analysis/25_bd_mccrary_sensitivity.py: bin-width sweep
  across 6 variants (Firm A / full-sample / accountant-level, each
  cosine + dHash_indep) and 3-4 bin widths per variant. Reports
  Z_below, Z_above, p-values, and number of significant transitions
  per cell. Writes reports/bd_sensitivity/bd_sensitivity.{json,md}.
- paper/paper_a_appendix_v3.md: new "Appendix A. BD/McCrary Bin-Width
  Sensitivity" with Table A.I (all 20 sensitivity cells) and
  interpretation linking the empirical pattern to the main-text
  framing decision.
- export_v3.py: appendix inserted into SECTIONS between conclusion
  and references.
- paper/codex_bd_mccrary_opinion.md: codex gpt-5.4 recommendation
  captured verbatim for audit trail.

Main-text reframing
- Abstract: "three methodologically distinct estimators" ->
  "two estimators plus a Burgstahler-Dichev/McCrary density-
  smoothness diagnostic". Trimmed to 243 words.
- Introduction: related-work summary, pipeline step 5, accountant-
  level convergence sentence, contribution 4, and section-outline
  line all updated. Contribution 4 renamed to "Convergent threshold
  framework with a smoothness diagnostic".
- Methodology III-I: section renamed to "Convergent Threshold
  Determination with a Density-Smoothness Diagnostic". "Method 2:
  BD/McCrary Discontinuity" converted to "Density-Smoothness
  Diagnostic" in a new subsection; Method 3 (Beta mixture) renumbered
  to Method 2. Subsections 4 and 5 updated to refer to "two threshold
  estimators" with BD as diagnostic.
- Methodology III-A pipeline overview: "three methodologically
  distinct statistical methods" -> "two methodologically distinct
  threshold estimators complemented by a density-smoothness
  diagnostic".
- Methodology III-L: "three-method analysis" -> "accountant-level
  threshold analysis (KDE antimode, Beta-2 crossing, logit-Gaussian
  robustness crossing)".
- Results IV-D.1 heading: "BD/McCrary Discontinuity" ->
  "BD/McCrary Density-Smoothness Diagnostic". Prose now notes the
  Appendix-A bin-width instability explicitly.
- Results IV-E: Table VIII restructured to label BD rows
  "(diagnostic only; bin-unstable)" and "(diagnostic; null across
  Appendix A)". Summary sentence rewritten to frame BD null as
  evidence for clustered-but-smoothly-mixed rather than as a
  convergence failure. Table cosine P5 row corrected from 0.941 to
  0.9407 to match III-K.
- Results IV-G.3 and IV-I.2: "three-method convergence/thresholds"
  -> "accountant-level convergent thresholds" (clarifies the 3
  converging estimates are KDE antimode, Beta-2, logit-Gaussian,
  not KDE/BD/Beta).
- Discussion V-B: "three-method framework" -> "convergent threshold
  framework".
- Conclusion: "three methodologically distinct methods" -> "two
  threshold estimators and a density-smoothness diagnostic";
  contribution 3 restated; future-work sentence updated.
- Impact Statement (archived): "three methodologically distinct
  threshold-selection methods" -> "two methodologically distinct
  threshold estimators plus a density-smoothness diagnostic" so the
  archived text is internally consistent if reused.

Discussion V-B / V-G already framed BD as a diagnostic in v3.5
(unchanged in this commit). The reframing therefore brings Abstract /
Introduction / Methodology / Results / Conclusion into alignment with
the Discussion framing that codex had already endorsed.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-21 14:32:50 +08:00
gbanyan 12f716ddf1 Paper A v3.5: resolve codex round-4 residual issues
Fully addresses the partial-resolution / unfixed items from codex
gpt-5.4 round-4 review (codex_review_gpt54_v3_4.md):

Critical
- Table XI z/p columns now reproduce from displayed counts. Earlier
  table had 1-4-unit transcription errors in k values and a fabricated
  cos > 0.9407 calibration row; both fixed by rerunning Script 24
  with cos = 0.9407 added to COS_RULES and copying exact values from
  the JSON output.
- Section III-L classifier now defined entirely in terms of the
  independent-minimum dHash statistic that the deployed code (Scripts
  21, 23, 24) actually uses; the legacy "cosine-conditional dHash"
  language is removed. Tables IX, XI, XII, XVI are now arithmetically
  consistent with the III-L classifier definition.
- "0.95 not calibrated to Firm A" inconsistency reconciled: Section
  III-H now correctly says 0.95 is the whole-sample Firm A P95 of the
  per-signature cosine distribution, matching III-L and IV-F.

Major
- Abstract trimmed to 246 words (from 367) to meet IEEE Access 250-word
  limit. Removed "we break the circularity" overclaim; replaced with
  "report capture rates on both folds with Wilson 95% intervals to
  make fold-level variance visible".
- Conclusion mirrors the Abstract reframe: 70/30 split documents
  within-firm sampling variance, not external generalization.
- Introduction no longer promises precision / F1 / EER metrics that
  Methods/Results don't deliver; replaced with anchor-based capture /
  FAR + Wilson CI language.
- Section III-G within-auditor-year empirical-check wording corrected:
  intra-report consistency (IV-H.3) is a different test (two co-signers
  on the same report, firm-level homogeneity) and is not a within-CPA
  year-level mixing check; the assumption is maintained as a bounded
  identification convention.
- Section III-H "two analyses fully threshold-free" corrected to "only
  the partner-level ranking is threshold-free"; longitudinal-stability
  uses 0.95 cutoff, intra-report uses the operational classifier.

Minor
- Impact Statement removed from export_v3.py SECTIONS list (IEEE Access
  Regular Papers do not have a standalone Impact Statement). The file
  itself is retained as an archived non-paper note for cover-letter /
  grant-report reuse, with a clear archive header.
- All 7 previously unused references ([27] dHash, [31][32] partner-
  signature mandates, [33] Taiwan partner rotation, [34] YOLO original,
  [35] VLM survey, [36] Mann-Whitney) are now cited in-text:
    [27] in Methodology III-E (dHash definition)
    [31][32][33] in Introduction (audit-quality regulation context)
    [34][35] in Methodology III-C/III-D
    [36] in Results IV-C (Mann-Whitney result)

Updated Script 24 to include cos = 0.9407 in COS_RULES so Table XI's
calibration-fold P5 row is computed from the same data file as the
other rows.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-21 12:23:03 +08:00
gbanyan 0ff1845b22 Paper A v3.4: resolve codex round-3 major-revision blockers
Three blockers from codex gpt-5.4 round-3 review (codex_review_gpt54_v3_3.md):

B1 Classifier vs three-method threshold mismatch
  - Methodology III-L rewritten to make explicit that the per-signature
    classifier and the accountant-level three-method convergence operate
    at different units (signature vs accountant) and are complementary
    rather than substitutable.
  - Add Results IV-G.3 + Table XII operational-threshold sensitivity:
    cos>0.95 vs cos>0.945 shifts dual-rule capture by 1.19 pp on whole
    Firm A; ~5% of signatures flip at the Uncertain/Moderate boundary.

B2 Held-out validation false "within Wilson CI" claim
  - Script 24 recomputes both calibration-fold and held-out-fold rates
    with Wilson 95% CIs and a two-proportion z-test on each rule.
  - Table XI replaced with the proper fold-vs-fold comparison; prose
    in Results IV-G.2 and Discussion V-C corrected: extreme rules agree
    across folds (p>0.7); operational rules in the 85-95% band differ
    by 1-5 pp due to within-Firm-A heterogeneity (random 30% sample
    contained more high-replication C1 accountants), not generalization
    failure.

B3 Interview evidence reframed as practitioner knowledge
  - The Firm A "interviews" referenced throughout v3.3 are private,
    informal professional conversations, not structured research
    interviews. Reframed accordingly: all "interview*" references in
    abstract / intro / methodology / results / discussion / conclusion
    are replaced with "domain knowledge / industry-practice knowledge".
  - This avoids overclaiming methodological formality and removes the
    human-subjects research framing that triggered the ethics-statement
    requirement.
  - Section III-H four-pillar Firm A validation now stands on visual
    inspection, signature-level statistics, accountant-level GMM, and
    the three Section IV-H analyses, with practitioner knowledge as
    background context only.
  - New Section III-M ("Data Source and Firm Anonymization") covers
    MOPS public-data provenance, Firm A/B/C/D pseudonymization, and
    conflict-of-interest declaration.

Add signature_analysis/24_validation_recalibration.py for the recomputed
calib-vs-held-out z-tests and the classifier sensitivity analysis;
output in reports/validation_recalibration/.

Pending (not in this commit): abstract length (368 -> 250 words),
Impact Statement removal, BD/McCrary sensitivity reporting, full
reproducibility appendix, references cleanup.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-21 11:45:24 +08:00
gbanyan 51d15b32a5 Paper A v3.2: partner v4 feedback integration (threshold-independent benchmark validation)
Partner v4 (signature_paper_draft_v4) proposed 3 substantive improvements;
partner confirmed the 2013-2019 restriction was an error (sample stays
2013-2023). The remaining suggestions are adopted with our own data.

## New scripts
- Script 22 (partner ranking): ranks all Big-4 auditor-years by mean
  max-cosine. Firm A occupies 95.9% of top-10% (base 27.8%), 3.5x
  concentration ratio. Stable across 2013-2023 (88-100% per year).
- Script 23 (intra-report consistency): for each 2-signer report,
  classify both signatures and check agreement. Firm A agrees 89.9%
  vs 62-67% at other Big-4. 87.5% Firm A reports have BOTH signers
  non-hand-signed; only 4 reports (0.01%) both hand-signed.

## New methodology additions
- III-G: explicit within-auditor-year no-mixing identification
  assumption (supported by Firm A interview evidence).
- III-H: 4th Firm A validation line: threshold-independent evidence
  from partner ranking + intra-report consistency.

## New results section IV-H (threshold-independent validation)
- IV-H.1: Firm A year-by-year cosine<0.95 rate. 2013-2019 mean=8.26%,
  2020-2023 mean=6.96%, 2023 lowest (3.75%). Stability contradicts
  partner's hypothesis that 2020+ electronic systems increase
  heterogeneity -- data shows opposite (electronic systems more
  consistent than physical stamping).
- IV-H.2: partner ranking top-K tables (pooled + year-by-year).
- IV-H.3: intra-report consistency per-firm table.

## Renumbering
- Section H (was Classification Results) -> I
- Section I (was Ablation) -> J
- Tables XIII-XVI new (yearly stability, top-K pooled, top-10% per-year,
  intra-report), XVII = classification (was XII), XVIII = ablation
  (was XIII).

These threshold-independent analyses address the codex review concern
about circular validation by providing benchmark evidence that does not
depend on any threshold calibrated to Firm A itself.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-21 01:59:49 +08:00
gbanyan 9d19ca5a31 Paper A v3.1: apply codex peer-review fixes + add Scripts 20/21
Major fixes per codex (gpt-5.4) review:

## Structural fixes
- Fixed three-method convergence overclaim: added Script 20 to run KDE
  antimode, BD/McCrary, and Beta mixture EM on accountant-level means.
  Accountant-level 1D convergence: KDE antimode=0.973, Beta-2=0.979,
  LogGMM-2=0.976 (within ~0.006). BD/McCrary finds no transition at
  accountant level (consistent with smooth clustering, not sharp
  discontinuity).
- Disambiguated Method 1: KDE crossover (between two labeled distributions,
  used at signature all-pairs level) vs KDE antimode (single-distribution
  local minimum, used at accountant level).
- Addressed Firm A circular validation: Script 21 adds CPA-level 70/30
  held-out fold. Calibration thresholds derived from 70% only; heldout
  rates reported with Wilson 95% CIs (e.g. cos>0.95 heldout=93.61%
  [93.21%-93.98%]).
- Fixed 139+32 vs 180: the split is 139/32 of 171 Firm A CPAs with >=10
  signatures (9 CPAs excluded for insufficient sample). Reconciled across
  intro, results, discussion, conclusion.
- Added document-level classification aggregation rule (worst-case signature
  label determines document label).

## Pixel-identity validation strengthened
- Script 21: built ~50,000-pair inter-CPA random negative anchor (replaces
  the original n=35 same-CPA low-similarity negative which had untenable
  Wilson CIs).
- Added Wilson 95% CI for every FAR in Table X.
- Proper EER interpolation (FAR=FRR point) in Table X.
- Softened "conservative recall" claim to "non-generalizable subset"
  language per codex feedback (byte-identical positives are a subset, not
  a representative positive class).
- Added inter-CPA stats: mean=0.762, P95=0.884, P99=0.913.

## Terminology & sentence-level fixes
- "statistically independent methods" -> "methodologically distinct methods"
  throughout (three diagnostics on the same sample are not independent).
- "formal bimodality check" -> "unimodality test" (dip test tests H0 of
  unimodality; rejection is consistent with but not a direct test of
  bimodality).
- "Firm A near-universally non-hand-signed" -> already corrected to
  "replication-dominated" in prior commit; this commit strengthens that
  framing with explicit held-out validation.
- "discrete-behavior regimes" -> "clustered accountant-level heterogeneity"
  (BD/McCrary non-transition at accountant level rules out sharp discrete
  boundaries; the defensible claim is clustered-but-smooth).
- Softened White 1982 quasi-MLE claim (no longer framed as a guarantee).
- Fixed VLM 1.2% FP overclaim (now acknowledges the 1.2% could be VLM FP
  or YOLO FN).
- Unified "310 byte-identical signatures" language across Abstract,
  Results, Discussion (previously alternated between pairs/signatures).
- Defined min_dhash_independent explicitly in Section III-G.
- Fixed table numbering (Table XI heldout added, classification moved to
  XII, ablation to XIII).
- Explained 84,386 vs 85,042 gap (656 docs have only one signature, no
  pairwise stat).
- Made Table IX explicitly a "consistency check" not "validation"; paired
  it with Table XI held-out rates as the genuine external check.
- Defined 0.941 threshold (calibration-fold Firm A cosine P5).
- Computed 0.945 Firm A rate exactly (94.52%) instead of interpolated.
- Fixed Ref [24] Qwen2.5-VL to full IEEE format (arXiv:2502.13923).

## New artifacts
- Script 20: accountant-level three-method threshold analysis
- Script 21: expanded validation (inter-CPA anchor, held-out Firm A 70/30)
- paper/codex_review_gpt54_v3.md: preserved review feedback

Output: Paper_A_IEEE_Access_Draft_v3.docx (391 KB, rebuilt from v3.1
markdown sources).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-21 01:11:51 +08:00
gbanyan 68689c9f9b Correct Firm A framing: replication-dominated, not pure
Interview evidence from multiple Firm A accountants confirms that MOST
use replication (stamping / firm-level e-signing) but a MINORITY may
still hand-sign. Firm A is therefore a "replication-dominated" population,
not a "pure" one. This framing is consistent with:

- 92.5% of Firm A signatures exceed cosine 0.95 (majority replication)
- The long left tail (~7%) captures the minority hand-signers, not scan
  noise or preprocessing artifacts
- Hartigan dip test: Firm A cosine unimodal long-tail (p=0.17)
- Accountant-level GMM: of 180 Firm A accountants, 139 cluster in C1
  (high-replication) and 32 in C2 (middle band = minority hand-signers)

Updates docstrings and report text in Scripts 15, 16, 18, 19 to match.
Partner v3's "near-universal non-hand-signing" language corrected.

Script 19 regenerated with the updated text.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-20 21:57:16 +08:00
gbanyan fbfab1fa68 Add three-convergent-method threshold scripts + pixel-identity validation
Implements Partner v3's statistical rigor requirements at the level of
signature vs. accountant analysis units:

- Script 15 (Hartigan dip test): formal unimodality test via `diptest`.
  Result: Firm A cosine UNIMODAL (p=0.17, pure non-hand-signed population);
  full-sample cosine MULTIMODAL (p<0.001, mix of two regimes);
  accountant-level aggregates MULTIMODAL on both cos and dHash.

- Script 16 (Burgstahler-Dichev / McCrary): discretised Z-score transition
  detection. Firm A and full-sample cosine transitions at 0.985; dHash
  at 2.0.

- Script 17 (Beta mixture EM + logit-GMM): 2/3-component Beta via EM
  with MoM M-step, plus parallel Gaussian mixture on logit transform
  as White (1982) robustness check. Beta-3 BIC < Beta-2 BIC at signature
  level confirms 2-component is a forced fit -- supporting the pivot
  to accountant-level mixture.

- Script 18 (Accountant-level GMM): rebuilds the 2026-04-16 analysis
  that was done inline and not saved. BIC-best K=3 with components
  matching prior memory almost exactly: C1 (cos=0.983, dh=2.41, 20%,
  Deloitte 139/141), C2 (0.954, 6.99, 51%, KPMG/PwC/EY), C3 (0.928,
  11.17, 28%, small firms). 2-component natural thresholds:
  cos=0.9450, dh=8.10.

- Script 19 (Pixel-identity validation): no human annotation needed.
  Uses pixel_identical_to_closest (310 sigs) as gold positive and
  Firm A as anchor positive. Confirms Firm A cosine>0.95 = 92.51%
  (matches prior 2026-04-08 finding of 92.5%), dual rule
  cos>0.95 AND dhash_indep<=8 captures 89.95% of Firm A.

Python deps added: diptest, scikit-learn (installed into venv).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-20 21:51:41 +08:00
gbanyan a261a22bd2 Add Deloitte distribution & independent dHash analysis scripts
- Script 13: Firm A normality/multimodality analysis (Shapiro-Wilk, Anderson-Darling, KDE, per-accountant ANOVA, Beta/Gamma fitting)
- Script 14: Independent min-dHash computation across all pairs per accountant (not just cosine-nearest pair)
- THRESHOLD_VALIDATION_OPTIONS: 2026-01 discussion doc on threshold validation approaches
- .gitignore: exclude model weights, node artifacts, and xlsx data

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-20 21:34:24 +08:00
gbanyan 939a348da4 Add Paper A (IEEE TAI) complete draft with Firm A-calibrated dual-method classification
Paper draft includes all sections (Abstract through Conclusion), 36 references,
and supporting scripts. Key methodology: Cosine similarity + dHash dual-method
verification with thresholds calibrated against known-replication firm (Firm A).

Includes:
- 8 section markdown files (paper_a_*.md)
- Ablation study script (ResNet-50 vs VGG-16 vs EfficientNet-B0)
- Recalibrated classification script (84,386 PDFs, 5-tier system)
- Figure generation and Word export scripts
- Citation renumbering script ([1]-[36])
- Signature analysis pipeline (12 steps)
- YOLO extraction scripts

Three rounds of AI review completed (GPT-5.4, Claude Opus 4.6, Gemini 3 Pro).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-04-06 23:05:33 +08:00