Overfitting Reduction in Convex Regression

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Liao, Zhiqiang, Dai, Sheng, Lim, Eunji, Kuosmanen, Timo
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Liao, Zhiqiang
Dai, Sheng
Lim, Eunji
Kuosmanen, Timo
author_facet Liao, Zhiqiang
Dai, Sheng
Lim, Eunji
Kuosmanen, Timo
contents Convex regression is a method for estimating the convex function from a data set. This method has played an important role in operations research, economics, machine learning, and many other areas. However, it has been empirically observed that convex regression produces inconsistent estimates of convex functions and extremely large subgradients near the boundary as the sample size increases. In this paper, we provide theoretical evidence of this overfitting behavior. To eliminate this behavior, we propose two new estimators by placing a bound on the subgradients of the convex function. We further show that our proposed estimators can reduce overfitting by proving that they converge to the underlying true convex function and that their subgradients converge to the gradient of the underlying function, both uniformly over the domain with probability one as the sample size is increasing to infinity. An application to Finnish electricity distribution firms confirms the superior performance of the proposed methods in predictive power over the existing methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_09528
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Overfitting Reduction in Convex Regression
Liao, Zhiqiang
Dai, Sheng
Lim, Eunji
Kuosmanen, Timo
Methodology
Econometrics
Applications
Convex regression is a method for estimating the convex function from a data set. This method has played an important role in operations research, economics, machine learning, and many other areas. However, it has been empirically observed that convex regression produces inconsistent estimates of convex functions and extremely large subgradients near the boundary as the sample size increases. In this paper, we provide theoretical evidence of this overfitting behavior. To eliminate this behavior, we propose two new estimators by placing a bound on the subgradients of the convex function. We further show that our proposed estimators can reduce overfitting by proving that they converge to the underlying true convex function and that their subgradients converge to the gradient of the underlying function, both uniformly over the domain with probability one as the sample size is increasing to infinity. An application to Finnish electricity distribution firms confirms the superior performance of the proposed methods in predictive power over the existing methods.
title Overfitting Reduction in Convex Regression
topic Methodology
Econometrics
Applications
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.09528