Optimize stratified evidence sampling

What it's for

Makes evidence collection decision-aware so teams, repositories, projects, or services are measured where another sample reduces uncertainty most.

What you give it

Every tool is a pure function: it computes from what you pass it and reads nothing on its own. Inputs split into evidence you supply from your connected systems, calibration your team owns, and numerical controls that affect precision but never the result's meaning.

{
  "strata": [
    {
      "id": "high-variance-services",
      "outcome_standard_deviation": 5,
      "population_size": 1000
    },
    {
      "id": "stable-services",
      "outcome_standard_deviation": 1,
      "population_size": 1000
    }
  ],
  "total_sample_budget": 100
}

What you get back

This is the actual output of running the example above — computed by the same function the platform calls, not an illustration.

{
  "allocations": [
    {
      "at_sampling_cap": false,
      "next_sample_variance_reduction": 0.00089644,
      "population_size": 1000,
      "population_weight": 0.5,
      "sample_size": 83,
      "sampling_fraction": 0.083,
      "stratum_id": "high-variance-services",
      "variance_contribution": 0.0690512
    },
    {
      "at_sampling_cap": false,
      "next_sample_variance_reduction": 0.00081699,
      "population_size": 1000,
      "population_weight": 0.5,
      "sample_size": 17,
      "sampling_fraction": 0.017,
      "stratum_id": "stable-services",
      "variance_contribution": 0.01445588
    }
  ],
  "assumptions": [
    "The target is the finite-population mean and every stratum is sampled randomly without replacement using the reported allocation.",
    "Outcome standard deviations are credible planning estimates on a common scale and strata are exhaustive, mutually exclusive, and fixed before sampling.",
    "One sample consumes one budget slot in every stratum; unequal collection costs require a cost-constrained extension rather than reinterpretation of this result.",
    "The greedy marginal allocation is exact because each stratum's finite-population variance reduction is separable and diminishing in integer sample size."
  ],
  "decision": "variance_minimizing_sample_allocation_available",
  "method": "exact_discrete_neyman_finite_population_allocation_v1",
  "precision": {
    "confidence_level": 0.95,
    "estimated_variance": 0.08350709,
    "margin_of_error": 0.566382,
    "next_sample_variance_reduction": 0.00089644,
    "proportional_allocation_variance": 0.1235,
    "relative_precision_gain_vs_proportional": 0.3238,
    "standard_error": 0.288976,
    "variance_reduction_vs_proportional": 0.03999291
  },
  "sample": {
    "allocated_samples_reconciled": 100,
    "detail_rows_returned": 2,

How it works

Constrained optimization — Pick the best feasible option under real limits — budget, headcount, dependencies, capacity — rather than ranking a list and hoping it fits.

1. 1 Allocate a fixed evidence budget across finite-population strata with exact discrete Neyman allocation and quantify precision gained over proportional sampling.
2. 2 Evaluate the method-specific diagnostics and gates returned by the function, then abstain unless the declared decision clears them under locally governed thresholds.

Before you trust it

Every tool in the catalog ships with the conditions under which its answer is meaningful — and the conditions under which it should abstain instead of guessing.

Calibrating it to your org

Calibration workflow

1. 1 Define the management decision, target outcome, aggregate unit, privacy boundary, cadence, and prediction/intervention horizon for this organization.
2. 2 Build a tenant-scoped historical cohort using only information available before each prediction or decision; preserve zero periods, censoring, assignment probabilities, and unresolved outcomes when the method requires them.
3. 3 Estimate statistical parameters on training history, but obtain costs, utilities, risk tolerance, practical-effect thresholds, capacity, and policy constraints from accountable decision owners.
4. 4 Validate on later time windows or held-out aggregate units at the deployment grain, against a simple baseline and the function-specific validation strategy.
5. 5 Deploy only if the returned decision clears evidence, overlap, calibration, robustness, and guardrail checks; warning, unsupported, schema-gap, and fallback decisions are abstentions.
6. 6 Monitor realized outcomes, data drift, coverage, and decision regret; recalibrate at a governed cadence or after a detected regime/definition change, never merely because a stakeholder dislikes the result.

Call it from your AI

You don't wire up 388 tools in your MCP client. The GitRevio MCP server exposes 20 tools, three of which let an agent search the catalog, read a tool's schema, and run it — so the assistant finds this one on its own.

gitrevio_capabilities_search
  { "q": "allocate a fixed evidence budget across" }
  → finds "optimize_stratified_evidence_sampling"

gitrevio_capability_describe
  { "capability_id": "optimize_stratified_evidence_sampling" }
  → returns the input schema and agent guidance shown on this page

gitrevio_capability_run
  { "capability_id": "optimize_stratified_evidence_sampling", "arguments": { ... } }
  → returns the result shown above

Works in Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Continue.dev, Goose and Aider. See the MCP server.

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