Lesson 7 of 8
Evaluate RAG
Evaluate retrieval and answer quality separately so you know where failures actually come from.
Active reading
Understand the idea
First ask whether the right evidence was retrieved. Then ask whether the answer used that evidence correctly. A generation model cannot recover evidence that retrieval never supplied.
Example
For 20 test questions, record expected source, retrieved source rank and whether the final answer is supported.
Practice
Apply this lesson to one real task you already have, then write down how you would verify the result.
Common mistake
Scoring only whether the final answer sounds plausible.
Key takeaway
Measure retrieval before generation; otherwise you will optimize the wrong component.