Conformal Prediction With Conditional Guarantees

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Gibbs, Isaac, Cherian, John J., Candès, Emmanuel J.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2023
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author Gibbs, Isaac
Cherian, John J.
Candès, Emmanuel J.
author_facet Gibbs, Isaac
Cherian, John J.
Candès, Emmanuel J.
contents We consider the problem of constructing distribution-free prediction sets with finite-sample conditional guarantees. Prior work has shown that it is impossible to provide exact conditional coverage universally in finite samples. Thus, most popular methods only guarantee marginal coverage over the covariates or are restricted to a limited set of conditional targets, e.g. coverage over a finite set of pre-specified subgroups. This paper bridges this gap by defining a spectrum of problems that interpolate between marginal and conditional validity. We motivate these problems by reformulating conditional coverage as coverage over a class of covariate shifts. When the target class of shifts is finite-dimensional, we show how to simultaneously obtain exact finite-sample coverage over all possible shifts. For example, given a collection of subgroups, our prediction sets guarantee coverage over each group. For more flexible, infinite-dimensional classes where exact coverage is impossible, we provide a procedure for quantifying the coverage errors of our algorithm. Moreover, by tuning interpretable hyperparameters, we allow the practitioner to control the size of these errors across shifts of interest. Our methods can be incorporated into existing split conformal inference pipelines, and thus can be used to quantify the uncertainty of modern black-box algorithms without distributional assumptions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2305_12616
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Conformal Prediction With Conditional Guarantees
Gibbs, Isaac
Cherian, John J.
Candès, Emmanuel J.
Methodology
We consider the problem of constructing distribution-free prediction sets with finite-sample conditional guarantees. Prior work has shown that it is impossible to provide exact conditional coverage universally in finite samples. Thus, most popular methods only guarantee marginal coverage over the covariates or are restricted to a limited set of conditional targets, e.g. coverage over a finite set of pre-specified subgroups. This paper bridges this gap by defining a spectrum of problems that interpolate between marginal and conditional validity. We motivate these problems by reformulating conditional coverage as coverage over a class of covariate shifts. When the target class of shifts is finite-dimensional, we show how to simultaneously obtain exact finite-sample coverage over all possible shifts. For example, given a collection of subgroups, our prediction sets guarantee coverage over each group. For more flexible, infinite-dimensional classes where exact coverage is impossible, we provide a procedure for quantifying the coverage errors of our algorithm. Moreover, by tuning interpretable hyperparameters, we allow the practitioner to control the size of these errors across shifts of interest. Our methods can be incorporated into existing split conformal inference pipelines, and thus can be used to quantify the uncertainty of modern black-box algorithms without distributional assumptions.
title Conformal Prediction With Conditional Guarantees
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.12616