Left examples have the keyword "unstable" on the OEBP.
Right examples have the keyword "stable" on the OEBP.
For the purposes of this Bongard Problem, "small change" means adding to or removing from an arbitrarily small portion of the image. Other kinds of small change could be explored, such as making changes in multiple small places, translating, rotating, scaling, or deforming the whole image slightly (see also keywords deformunstable vs. deformstable), or even context-dependent small changes (e.g., changing the shadings slightly in BP196, or making small 3d changes to the represented 3d objects in BP333), but they are not considered here.
In a "stable" Bongard Problem, no small change should outright flip an example's sorting. It is allowed for a small change to make an example sorted slightly more ambiguously.
Small changes that make an example no longer even fit in with the format of a Bongard Problem are not considered. (Otherwise, far fewer Bongard Problems would be called "stable".)
For whether small changes make an example no longer fit in with the Bongard Problem, see unstableworld vs. stableworld.
If a Bongard Problem is shown with imperfect hand drawings (keyword ignoreimperfections), it is fine to apply the keyword "unstable" ignoring this. For instance, a hand-drawn version of BP344 would still be tagged "unstable", even though it would show examples wrong by small amounts.
(Note: a BP would only be tagged "ignoreimperfections" in the first place if the underlying idea were such that several small changes could make an example switch sides, no longer fit in with the format of the Bongard Problem, or otherwise be ambiguously sorted.) |