Optimizing RAG Applications: A Guide to Methodologies, Metrics, and Evaluation Tools for Enhanced Reliability

Optimizing Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) applications involves using methodologies, metrics, and evaluation tools to enhance their reliability. Three categories of metrics are used in RAG evaluations: those based on the ground truth, those without the ground truth, and those based on LLM responses. Ground truth metrics involve comparing RAG responses with established answers, while metrics without ground truth focus on evaluating the relevance between queries, context, and responses. Metrics based on LLM responses consider factors such as friendliness, harmfulness, and conciseness. Evaluation tools like Ragas, LlamaIndex, TruLens-Eval, and Phoenix can help assess RAG applications' performance and capabilities.