Is active learning development dependent on a sufficient number of coded documents?

Active learning development is indeed dependent on having a sufficient number of coded documents. This is because active learning relies on supervised machine learning techniques that require labeled (or coded) data to train the model effectively. The process involves the model identifying and scoring unlabeled documents to determine which ones would be most beneficial to label next, helping to refine and improve the model's accuracy over time.

Having multiple coded documents allows the active learning algorithm to understand a broader range of examples and make more informed predictions. It uses these documents to learn patterns in the data, enabling it to generalize better to new, unseen documents. The more diverse and representative the set of coded documents is, the more robust the active learning model will be.

While there might be some limited capabilities for active learning with very few coded documents, the performance and effectiveness significantly improve when a larger dataset is used. Therefore, relying solely on minimal coded documents would undermine the purpose and functionality of active learning, which is to leverage extensive labeled data for better decision-making and predictions.