Module 05 Knowledge Check
5 questions. Pass mark 4 out of 5. Answer every question before checking the answer key below, then retry after reading the feedback.
1. What does 'grounded' actually require?
- A. The answer sounds confident
- B. Each material claim is supported by a retrieved passage the reader can check
- C. The model cites something
- D. The sources exist
2. A cited source exists and is relevant, but does not state the claim made. This is…
- A. Acceptable
- B. A citation failure - arguably worse than no citation, because it manufactures trust
- C. A retrieval success
- D. A formatting issue
3. Citations should point to…
- A. The whole document
- B. The specific passage or section used, ideally with a link back to the source record
- C. The vector index
- D. The model version
4. Instructing the model to 'only use the provided context' is…
- A. A guarantee
- B. Helpful but not sufficient - it reduces, not eliminates, unsupported additions
- C. Unnecessary
- D. Harmful
5. The strongest practical check on grounding is…
- A. Asking the model if it is sure
- B. Spot-checking cited passages against the claims they support
- C. Increasing top-k
- D. Using a bigger model
---
Answer Key and Explanations
Check these only after attempting every question.
1. B - Each material claim is supported by a retrieved passage the reader can check
A citation that does not support the specific claim is decoration, not grounding.
2. B - A citation failure - arguably worse than no citation, because it manufactures trust
Plausible-looking attribution invites the reader to stop checking, which is exactly when errors propagate.
3. B - The specific passage or section used, ideally with a link back to the source record
Verification must be cheap. Pointing at a 90-page PDF is not a citation in practice.
4. B - Helpful but not sufficient - it reduces, not eliminates, unsupported additions
Prompt instructions bias behaviour; they are not enforcement. Verification still belongs in the workflow.
5. B - Spot-checking cited passages against the claims they support
Self-reported confidence is not evidence. Independent verification is.
Practical Check
Apply this module to your own work: complete the module activity for *Grounded Answering with Citations*, then write one sentence naming what your result shows and one naming what it does not.
Strong Answer Pattern
A strong answer names the task, the evidence used, the check performed, and the remaining limitation. It avoids "proved", "guaranteed", or "always" unless the evidence genuinely supports it.