Top Highlights
- A leaderboard’s rank can be shakier than it looks: on 30 questions, the top model stayed on top in just 45% of resamples; even on 500, the top three kept their order only 77% of the time.
- Compare models on the same questions. Paired testing reduces noise, but the top two’s 1.85-point gap still wasn’t statistically clear (p = 0.072).
- Small gaps need lots of questions: detecting a 2-point difference may take about 5,300 questions; halving the gap roughly quadruples the sample needed.
- Read scores as tiers, not a strict ranking. Check question counts and uncertainty, and test shortlisted models on questions that reflect your own use case.
A narrow lead is not a clear win
A leaderboard can make a small gap look decisive. Here, the top model scored 71.8%, while the runner-up scored 70.0%. That 1.8-point lead sounds precise. Yet both models answered the same 2,000 MMLU questions, and a paired test found no clear difference between them. The result does not prove a tie. It does show that this test cannot confidently name a winner.
Question count changes the picture
Every score comes from a finite set of questions. Change that set, and the ranking may change, too. In a resampling test, the top model kept first place in 45% of draws with 30 questions, compared with 82% with 500. More questions usually make rankings steadier. Still, the result depends on the models and the benchmark. The study measured eight small open models on one multiple-choice test, so it cannot establish how other systems or tasks would rank.
Choose for the job, not the crown
A leaderboard offers a useful starting point, not a final verdict. So, readers should check the number of questions, uncertainty estimates and whether models faced the same questions. In this test, the lead between the top two was smaller than the study could reliably detect with 2,000 questions; the analysis estimated about 4,600 questions to test a gap of that size. For real-world adoption, teams should also test their own tasks. A model that leads on a broad benchmark may not fit a particular workflow best.
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