effective

Definition

A qualifier that separates a nominal number from the quantity that actually operates. Effective context length is how much of an advertised window the model genuinely uses; effective batch size folds in gradient accumulation and data parallelism; effective rank is how many directions carry real signal. Whenever you see it, the author is signalling that the headline figure overstates what is happening inside.

Explainers using this term

• Do Transformers Actually Work on Time Series? — The Argument and the Practical AnswerAre Transformers Effective for Time Series Forecasting?