Examining marginal properness in the external validation of survival models with squared and logarithmic losses

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Sonabend, Raphael, Zobolas, John, Bin, Riccardo Be, Kopper, Philipp, Burk, Lukas, Bender, Andreas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2022
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author Sonabend, Raphael
Zobolas, John
Bin, Riccardo Be
Kopper, Philipp
Burk, Lukas
Bender, Andreas
author_facet Sonabend, Raphael
Zobolas, John
Bin, Riccardo Be
Kopper, Philipp
Burk, Lukas
Bender, Andreas
contents Scoring rules promote rational and honest decision-making, which is important for model evaluation and becoming increasingly important for automated procedures such as `AutoML'. In this paper we survey common squared and logarithmic scoring rules for survival analysis, with a focus on their theoretical and empirical properness. We introduce a marginal definition of properness and show that both the Integrated Survival Brier Score (ISBS) and the Right-Censored Log-Likelihood (RCLL) are theoretically improper under this definition. We also investigate a new class of losses that may inform future survival scoring rules. Simulation experiments reveal that both the ISBS and RCLL behave as proper scoring rules in practice. The RCLL showed no violations across all settings, while ISBS exhibited only minor, negligible violations at extremely small sample sizes, suggesting one can trust results from historical experiments. As such we advocate for both the RCLL and ISBS in external validation of models, including in automated procedures. However, we note practical challenges in estimating these losses including estimation of censoring distributions and densities; as such further research is required to advance development of robust and honest evaluation in survival analysis.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2212_05260
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Examining marginal properness in the external validation of survival models with squared and logarithmic losses
Sonabend, Raphael
Zobolas, John
Bin, Riccardo Be
Kopper, Philipp
Burk, Lukas
Bender, Andreas
Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
Applications
Scoring rules promote rational and honest decision-making, which is important for model evaluation and becoming increasingly important for automated procedures such as `AutoML'. In this paper we survey common squared and logarithmic scoring rules for survival analysis, with a focus on their theoretical and empirical properness. We introduce a marginal definition of properness and show that both the Integrated Survival Brier Score (ISBS) and the Right-Censored Log-Likelihood (RCLL) are theoretically improper under this definition. We also investigate a new class of losses that may inform future survival scoring rules. Simulation experiments reveal that both the ISBS and RCLL behave as proper scoring rules in practice. The RCLL showed no violations across all settings, while ISBS exhibited only minor, negligible violations at extremely small sample sizes, suggesting one can trust results from historical experiments. As such we advocate for both the RCLL and ISBS in external validation of models, including in automated procedures. However, we note practical challenges in estimating these losses including estimation of censoring distributions and densities; as such further research is required to advance development of robust and honest evaluation in survival analysis.
title Examining marginal properness in the external validation of survival models with squared and logarithmic losses
topic Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.05260