Generalization and Informativeness of Conformal Prediction

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Zecchin, Matteo, Park, Sangwoo, Simeone, Osvaldo, Hellström, Fredrik
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Zecchin, Matteo
Park, Sangwoo
Simeone, Osvaldo
Hellström, Fredrik
author_facet Zecchin, Matteo
Park, Sangwoo
Simeone, Osvaldo
Hellström, Fredrik
contents The safe integration of machine learning modules in decision-making processes hinges on their ability to quantify uncertainty. A popular technique to achieve this goal is conformal prediction (CP), which transforms an arbitrary base predictor into a set predictor with coverage guarantees. While CP certifies the predicted set to contain the target quantity with a user-defined tolerance, it does not provide control over the average size of the predicted sets, i.e., over the informativeness of the prediction. In this work, a theoretical connection is established between the generalization properties of the base predictor and the informativeness of the resulting CP prediction sets. To this end, an upper bound is derived on the expected size of the CP set predictor that builds on generalization error bounds for the base predictor. The derived upper bound provides insights into the dependence of the average size of the CP set predictor on the amount of calibration data, the target reliability, and the generalization performance of the base predictor. The theoretical insights are validated using simple numerical regression and classification tasks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2401_11810
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Generalization and Informativeness of Conformal Prediction
Zecchin, Matteo
Park, Sangwoo
Simeone, Osvaldo
Hellström, Fredrik
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Information Theory
The safe integration of machine learning modules in decision-making processes hinges on their ability to quantify uncertainty. A popular technique to achieve this goal is conformal prediction (CP), which transforms an arbitrary base predictor into a set predictor with coverage guarantees. While CP certifies the predicted set to contain the target quantity with a user-defined tolerance, it does not provide control over the average size of the predicted sets, i.e., over the informativeness of the prediction. In this work, a theoretical connection is established between the generalization properties of the base predictor and the informativeness of the resulting CP prediction sets. To this end, an upper bound is derived on the expected size of the CP set predictor that builds on generalization error bounds for the base predictor. The derived upper bound provides insights into the dependence of the average size of the CP set predictor on the amount of calibration data, the target reliability, and the generalization performance of the base predictor. The theoretical insights are validated using simple numerical regression and classification tasks.
title Generalization and Informativeness of Conformal Prediction
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Information Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.11810