Error-quantified Conformal Inference for Time Series

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Wu, Junxi, Hu, Dongjian, Bao, Yajie, Xia, Shu-Tao, Zou, Changliang
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Wu, Junxi
Hu, Dongjian
Bao, Yajie
Xia, Shu-Tao
Zou, Changliang
author_facet Wu, Junxi
Hu, Dongjian
Bao, Yajie
Xia, Shu-Tao
Zou, Changliang
contents Uncertainty quantification in time series prediction is challenging due to the temporal dependence and distribution shift on sequential data. Conformal inference provides a pivotal and flexible instrument for assessing the uncertainty of machine learning models through prediction sets. Recently, a series of online conformal inference methods updated thresholds of prediction sets by performing online gradient descent on a sequence of quantile loss functions. A drawback of such methods is that they only use the information of revealed non-conformity scores via miscoverage indicators but ignore error quantification, namely the distance between the non-conformity score and the current threshold. To accurately leverage the dynamic of miscoverage error, we propose \textit{Error-quantified Conformal Inference} (ECI) by smoothing the quantile loss function. ECI introduces a continuous and adaptive feedback scale with the miscoverage error, rather than simple binary feedback in existing methods. We establish a long-term coverage guarantee for ECI under arbitrary dependence and distribution shift. The extensive experimental results show that ECI can achieve valid miscoverage control and output tighter prediction sets than other baselines.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_00818
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Error-quantified Conformal Inference for Time Series
Wu, Junxi
Hu, Dongjian
Bao, Yajie
Xia, Shu-Tao
Zou, Changliang
Machine Learning
Uncertainty quantification in time series prediction is challenging due to the temporal dependence and distribution shift on sequential data. Conformal inference provides a pivotal and flexible instrument for assessing the uncertainty of machine learning models through prediction sets. Recently, a series of online conformal inference methods updated thresholds of prediction sets by performing online gradient descent on a sequence of quantile loss functions. A drawback of such methods is that they only use the information of revealed non-conformity scores via miscoverage indicators but ignore error quantification, namely the distance between the non-conformity score and the current threshold. To accurately leverage the dynamic of miscoverage error, we propose \textit{Error-quantified Conformal Inference} (ECI) by smoothing the quantile loss function. ECI introduces a continuous and adaptive feedback scale with the miscoverage error, rather than simple binary feedback in existing methods. We establish a long-term coverage guarantee for ECI under arbitrary dependence and distribution shift. The extensive experimental results show that ECI can achieve valid miscoverage control and output tighter prediction sets than other baselines.
title Error-quantified Conformal Inference for Time Series
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.00818