Conformal prediction with local weights: randomization enables local guarantees

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hore, Rohan, Barber, Rina Foygel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866917817768476672
author Hore, Rohan
Barber, Rina Foygel
author_facet Hore, Rohan
Barber, Rina Foygel
contents In this work, we consider the problem of building distribution-free prediction intervals with finite-sample conditional coverage guarantees. Conformal prediction (CP) is an increasingly popular framework for building such intervals with distribution-free guarantees, but these guarantees only ensure marginal coverage: the probability of coverage is averaged over both the training and test data, meaning that there might be substantial undercoverage within certain subpopulations. Instead, ideally we would want to have local coverage guarantees that hold for each possible value of the test point's features. While the impossibility of achieving pointwise local coverage is well established in the literature, many variants of conformal prediction algorithm show favourable local coverage properties empirically. Relaxing the definition of local coverage can allow for a theoretical understanding of this empirical phenomenon. We propose randomly localized conformal prediction (RLCP), a method that builds on localized CP and weighted CP techniques to return prediction intervals that are not only marginally valid but also offer relaxed local coverage guarantees and validity under covariate shift. Through a series of simulations and real data experiments, we validate these coverage guarantees of RLCP while comparing it with the other local conformal prediction methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2310_07850
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Conformal prediction with local weights: randomization enables local guarantees
Hore, Rohan
Barber, Rina Foygel
Methodology
In this work, we consider the problem of building distribution-free prediction intervals with finite-sample conditional coverage guarantees. Conformal prediction (CP) is an increasingly popular framework for building such intervals with distribution-free guarantees, but these guarantees only ensure marginal coverage: the probability of coverage is averaged over both the training and test data, meaning that there might be substantial undercoverage within certain subpopulations. Instead, ideally we would want to have local coverage guarantees that hold for each possible value of the test point's features. While the impossibility of achieving pointwise local coverage is well established in the literature, many variants of conformal prediction algorithm show favourable local coverage properties empirically. Relaxing the definition of local coverage can allow for a theoretical understanding of this empirical phenomenon. We propose randomly localized conformal prediction (RLCP), a method that builds on localized CP and weighted CP techniques to return prediction intervals that are not only marginally valid but also offer relaxed local coverage guarantees and validity under covariate shift. Through a series of simulations and real data experiments, we validate these coverage guarantees of RLCP while comparing it with the other local conformal prediction methods.
title Conformal prediction with local weights: randomization enables local guarantees
topic Methodology
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.07850