tensorflow / tensorflow/tensorboard

Edge case: duplicate step counts cause weird smoothing

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Description

If multiple points share a single step count, then smoothing can become very unrepresentative for a series.
Here's a simple artificial example:
Screen Shot 2022-08-12 at 10 35 09 AM
And here's a more complex real world example of this happening:
Screen Shot 2022-08-12 at 10 39 03 AM

This happens because the smoothing (a low pass filter) adjusts the smoothed series by a certain amount for every point that it processes. So if multiple points exist inside of a single step, then vertical lines will start to appear. Any data that comes after those vertical lines will be disproportionately influenced by those duplicate points, since they were "counted twice" (or 3 times, or 4, etc) in the smoothing filter.

I'll try to send in a PR to fix this when I have the time.

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating the smoothing low-pass filter used by TensorBoard charts and reproduce the issue with multiple points sharing one step count. Trace how each point affects the smoothed series. Done means duplicate-step points no longer disproportionately influence later data or produce the reported vertical artifacts.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
typescript
Domain
data-visualization
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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