Towards Data Science

One Vendor, Four Spellings: How Deterministic Stages Beat Similarity Scores

Towards Data Science
Jun 9

10 Common RAG Mistakes We Keep Seeing in Production

Enterprise Document Intelligence [Vol. 1 #4bis] - A coauthor note on the brick-by-brick pitfalls that justified the four-brick split, before Part II walks the fixes The post 10 Common RAG Mistakes We Keep Seeing in Production appeared first on Towards Data Science .

By Kezhan Shi
Towards Data Science
Aug 31

Why RAG Complexity Should Be Earned

The article outlines a framework for constructing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines that progressively add complexity as needed to address observed failure modes. It begins with basic lexical and hybrid search techniques, then incorporates reranking and agentic information‑seeking strategies to improve performance. The approach emphasizes that more sophisticated components should only be introduced when simpler methods prove insufficient.

By Tahreem Rasul
Towards Data Science
Aug 20

Three Kinds of RAG Corpus, and What It Costs to Build for the Wrong One

The article explains that enterprise document intelligence can be categorized into three distinct corpus types, each requiring a specific architecture. It outlines how to determine the shape of a document collection through three key questions. The piece also discusses the costs associated with building a system for the incorrect corpus type.

By angela shi
Towards Data Science
Jul 6

Stop Ranking Agent Configs by Average Score

Best-worst comparisons, MaxDiff-style judging, and Plackett-Luce utility scores give agent teams a cleaner way to decide which configs to ship, prune, and route toward next. The post Stop Ranking Agent Configs by Average Score appeared first on Towards Data Science .

By Doster Esh
Towards Data Science
Aug 12

Before Full Agentic RAG: Know How You Decide, and the Parsing Methods You Pick From

Enterprise Document Intelligence [Vol. 1 #5nonies] - Nature, plan, execute, synthesize: closing brick 1 with a dispatcher that reads each PDF’s nature and picks the method that fits, fitz, Docling, PaddleOCR, EasyOCR, MinerU or Surya, then folds the outputs into one corpus The post Before Full Agentic RAG: Know How You Decide, and the Parsing Methods You Pick From appeared first on Towards Data Science .

By angela shi