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Main Authors: Cai, Zhongze, Jiang, Hansheng, Li, Xiaocheng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.14899
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author Cai, Zhongze
Jiang, Hansheng
Li, Xiaocheng
author_facet Cai, Zhongze
Jiang, Hansheng
Li, Xiaocheng
contents In this paper, we consider the contextual robust optimization problem under an out-of-distribution setting. The contextual robust optimization problem considers a risk-sensitive objective function for an optimization problem with the presence of a context vector (also known as covariates or side information) capturing related information. While the existing works mainly consider the in-distribution setting, and the resultant robustness achieved is in an out-of-sample sense, our paper studies an out-of-distribution setting where there can be a difference between the test environment and the training environment where the data are collected. We propose methods that handle this out-of-distribution setting, and the key relies on a density ratio estimation for the distribution shift. We show that additional structures such as covariate shift and label shift are not only helpful in defending distribution shift but also necessary in avoiding non-trivial solutions compared to other principled methods such as distributionally robust optimization. We also illustrate how the covariates can be useful in this procedure. Numerical experiments generate more intuitions and demonstrate that the proposed methods can help avoid over-conservative solutions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2410_14899
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Out-of-distribution Robust Optimization
Cai, Zhongze
Jiang, Hansheng
Li, Xiaocheng
Optimization and Control
In this paper, we consider the contextual robust optimization problem under an out-of-distribution setting. The contextual robust optimization problem considers a risk-sensitive objective function for an optimization problem with the presence of a context vector (also known as covariates or side information) capturing related information. While the existing works mainly consider the in-distribution setting, and the resultant robustness achieved is in an out-of-sample sense, our paper studies an out-of-distribution setting where there can be a difference between the test environment and the training environment where the data are collected. We propose methods that handle this out-of-distribution setting, and the key relies on a density ratio estimation for the distribution shift. We show that additional structures such as covariate shift and label shift are not only helpful in defending distribution shift but also necessary in avoiding non-trivial solutions compared to other principled methods such as distributionally robust optimization. We also illustrate how the covariates can be useful in this procedure. Numerical experiments generate more intuitions and demonstrate that the proposed methods can help avoid over-conservative solutions.
title Out-of-distribution Robust Optimization
topic Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.14899