TDA Topology Validation

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Validate topological data analysis results using built-in consistency checks and known benchmarks.

Sby Skills Guide Bot
Data & AIAdvanced
107/28/2026
Claude Code
#topological-data-analysis#validation#persistence-diagrams#statistical-testing#benchmarks

Recommended for

Our review

Checks the mathematical correctness of TDA results against known benchmarks and internal consistency checks.

Strengths

  • Comprehensive validation checklist covering persistence diagrams, total persistence, null models, Wasserstein distances, and cross-era replication.
  • Includes known benchmarks for direct comparison with established results from specific studies.
  • Automates complex statistical tests and consistency checks that would be tedious to perform manually.

Limitations

  • Requires deep TDA knowledge to interpret results correctly.
  • Benchmarks are specific to certain datasets (e.g., trajectory_tda, BHPS, USoc) and may not generalize.
  • Does not automatically fix errors, only detects them.
When to use it

When rigorously validating TDA results against known benchmarks and consistency criteria after running analysis pipelines.

When not to use it

When you need a general-purpose validation tool without domain-specific benchmarks, or when results lack the structure required for comparison.

Security analysis

Safe
Quality score85/100

The skill is a static validation checklist and benchmark document. It contains no executable code, no tool invocations, and no instructions that could cause harm. It is purely informational.

No concerns found

Examples

Validate Wasserstein results for trajectory TDA
/validate-topology trajectory_tda results/trajectory_tda_integration/04_nulls_wasserstein.json
Validate H₀ null analysis for trajectory TDA
/validate-topology trajectory_tda results/trajectory_tda_h0_analysis.json

/validate-topology — Validate Topological Results

Check mathematical correctness of TDA results against known benchmarks and internal consistency checks.

Usage

/validate-topology [domain] [result-file]

Example: /validate-topology trajectory_tda results/trajectory_tda_integration/04_nulls_wasserstein.json


Validation checklist

Persistence diagram sanity

  • [ ] All birth values ≥ 0
  • [ ] All death values > birth (finite features)
  • [ ] H₀ has exactly one infinite feature (the final connected component)
  • [ ] Feature counts are plausible for landmark count L: H₀ has L-1 finite features; H₁ count varies

Total persistence scaling

  • [ ] Total persistence scales approximately linearly with L (±15% across a 2× range)
  • [ ] Maximum persistence is stable across L values (should vary < 5%)

Null model consistency

  • [ ] Label/cohort shuffle p-values are non-significant (negative control)
  • [ ] Markov-2 null generates more total persistence than Markov-1 (higher-order Markov → more structured surrogates)
  • [ ] Null distribution standard deviations are plausible (not near-zero, not huge)

Wasserstein-specific

  • [ ] W(obs↔null) and W(null↔null) are of comparable magnitude (within ~3×)
  • [ ] p-value = proportion of null-null distances ≥ mean(obs-null distances)
  • [ ] 500 null-null pairs is sufficient for stable p-value at 3 decimal places

Cross-era replication

  • [ ] BHPS-era order-shuffle H₀ p-value ≈ USoc order-shuffle direction (both significant or both not)
  • [ ] BHPS-era Markov-1 direction ≈ USoc (both non-significant under total persistence)

Known benchmarks (trajectory_tda / P01)

| Test | Expected | Source | |---|---|---| | USoc order-shuffle H₀ (total persistence, L=5000) | p < 0.005 | P01 v5 Table 2 | | USoc Markov-1 H₀ (total persistence) | p = 1.000 | P01 v5 Table 2 | | USoc Markov-1 H₀ (Wasserstein, L=2000) | p = 0.002 | P01 v5 Table 2b | | BHPS order-shuffle H₀ | p = 0.000 | P01 v5 §4.7 | | BHPS Markov-1 H₀ | p = 1.000 | P01 v5 §4.7 | | GMM bootstrap ARI | 0.646 ± 0.086 | P01 v5 §3.5 |

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