Protocol
Diffusion Objectives and Sampling Tradeoffs
Reproduce the core diffusion mechanism at a feasible scale. Prefer a synthetic target with measurable coverage over a large model whose failures you cannot diagnose.
50–85 active hours60–90 min sessionsAdvanced
Mastery contract
Specialization · Standard 1.0 · Reproduce the core diffusion mechanism at a feasible scale. Prefer a synthetic target with measurable coverage over a large model whose failures you cannot diagnose.
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Reasoning — not yet passed
Derive the forward mean/variance and explain the assumptions behind the reverse-process parameterization.
Reliable implementation — not yet passed
Empirical noising moments agree with the analytic fixture within sampling uncertainty.
Reproducible experiment — not yet passed
All schedule/budget comparisons report quality and cost without reusing training data as evaluation.
Defense and handoff — not yet passed
Explain one sampler failure with numerical or statistical evidence and delimit reduced-scale claims.
All four criteria must pass. Activity completion does not satisfy them.
An independent reviewer reruns your work and varies something you did not rehearse: a fresh input, a different working directory, or a declared edge case.
Pilot decisions are provisional, not external credentials. For an appeal or sensitive artifact, contact your designated pilot operator with the submission ID. Export your assessment history.
What you will do
6 total
Derive the closed-form forward marginal and noise-prediction objective; explain the distinction between training loss and sample quality.
Implement a small DDPM on a 2D mixture or low-resolution images with timestep conditioning and a testable noising routine.
Compare 2 schedules and 3 sampling budgets using fixed seeds; report distribution coverage or an explicitly justified image metric plus runtime.
Debug an off-by-one timestep coefficient and a training/sampling normalization mismatch using known forward-process moments.
Write a 500–900 word technical report linking the reasoning, code, measurements, and limitations; include the project decision below.
Assess all 4 mastery criteria against saved artifacts, request an independent review, and repeat each failed criterion on a fresh example.
Essentials
A reading session alone never satisfies a mastery criterion.
Store source references, assumptions, and artifact paths beside every result.
Keep an untouched check case that differs from the worked example.
Record all attempts, including failures and results that contradict your prediction.
Use the stated comparison conditions; document every deviation before drawing a conclusion.
Protocol guardrails
Do
- +State the expected result before running the comparison.
- +Keep one minimal reproducible failing case when debugging.
- +Record environment versions and the exact command used.
- +Compare explanations with saved intermediate values.
- +Ask a reviewer to challenge the weakest assumption.
Don't
- ×Do not copy a worked solution and present it as an independent implementation.
- ×Do not tune against held-out evaluation outcomes.
- ×Do not report only the best seed or discard inconvenient runs.
- ×Do not equate elapsed hours or a completed run with a passed assessment.
- ×Do not conceal reduced-scale experiments behind claims about the original full-scale result.
Protocol authorship
Written by NuthinButta as instructional design. The teaching sources are the official references linked in each milestone; the exercises, workload and pass thresholds are ours, not their authors'.