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Autores principales: Namkoong, Hongseok, Ma, Yuanzhe, Glynn, Peter W.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2022
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Acceso en línea:https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.06338
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author Namkoong, Hongseok
Ma, Yuanzhe
Glynn, Peter W.
author_facet Namkoong, Hongseok
Ma, Yuanzhe
Glynn, Peter W.
contents The performance of decision policies and prediction models often deteriorates when applied to environments different from the ones seen during training. To ensure reliable operation, we analyze the stability of a system under distribution shift, which is defined as the smallest change in the underlying environment that causes the system's performance to deteriorate beyond a permissible threshold. In contrast to standard tail risk measures and distributionally robust losses that require the specification of a plausible magnitude of distribution shift, the stability measure is defined in terms of a more intuitive quantity: the level of acceptable performance degradation. We develop a minimax optimal estimator of stability and analyze its convergence rate, which exhibits a fundamental phase shift behavior. Our characterization of the minimax convergence rate shows that evaluating stability against large performance degradation incurs a statistical cost. Empirically, we demonstrate the practical utility of our stability framework by using it to compare system designs on problems where robustness to distribution shift is critical.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2212_06338
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Minimax Optimal Estimation of Stability Under Distribution Shift
Namkoong, Hongseok
Ma, Yuanzhe
Glynn, Peter W.
Machine Learning
The performance of decision policies and prediction models often deteriorates when applied to environments different from the ones seen during training. To ensure reliable operation, we analyze the stability of a system under distribution shift, which is defined as the smallest change in the underlying environment that causes the system's performance to deteriorate beyond a permissible threshold. In contrast to standard tail risk measures and distributionally robust losses that require the specification of a plausible magnitude of distribution shift, the stability measure is defined in terms of a more intuitive quantity: the level of acceptable performance degradation. We develop a minimax optimal estimator of stability and analyze its convergence rate, which exhibits a fundamental phase shift behavior. Our characterization of the minimax convergence rate shows that evaluating stability against large performance degradation incurs a statistical cost. Empirically, we demonstrate the practical utility of our stability framework by using it to compare system designs on problems where robustness to distribution shift is critical.
title Minimax Optimal Estimation of Stability Under Distribution Shift
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.06338