Generative Risk Minimization for Out-of-Distribution Generalization on Graphs

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Wang, Song, Tan, Zhen, Zhu, Yaochen, Zhang, Chuxu, Li, Jundong
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Wang, Song
Tan, Zhen
Zhu, Yaochen
Zhang, Chuxu
Li, Jundong
author_facet Wang, Song
Tan, Zhen
Zhu, Yaochen
Zhang, Chuxu
Li, Jundong
contents Out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization on graphs aims at dealing with scenarios where the test graph distribution differs from the training graph distributions. Compared to i.i.d. data like images, the OOD generalization problem on graph-structured data remains challenging due to the non-i.i.d. property and complex structural information on graphs. Recently, several works on graph OOD generalization have explored extracting invariant subgraphs that share crucial classification information across different distributions. Nevertheless, such a strategy could be suboptimal for entirely capturing the invariant information, as the extraction of discrete structures could potentially lead to the loss of invariant information or the involvement of spurious information. In this paper, we propose an innovative framework, named Generative Risk Minimization (GRM), designed to generate an invariant subgraph for each input graph to be classified, instead of extraction. To address the challenge of optimization in the absence of optimal invariant subgraphs (i.e., ground truths), we derive a tractable form of the proposed GRM objective by introducing a latent causal variable, and its effectiveness is validated by our theoretical analysis. We further conduct extensive experiments across a variety of real-world graph datasets for both node-level and graph-level OOD generalization, and the results demonstrate the superiority of our framework GRM.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_07968
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Generative Risk Minimization for Out-of-Distribution Generalization on Graphs
Wang, Song
Tan, Zhen
Zhu, Yaochen
Zhang, Chuxu
Li, Jundong
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Out-of-distribution (OOD) generalization on graphs aims at dealing with scenarios where the test graph distribution differs from the training graph distributions. Compared to i.i.d. data like images, the OOD generalization problem on graph-structured data remains challenging due to the non-i.i.d. property and complex structural information on graphs. Recently, several works on graph OOD generalization have explored extracting invariant subgraphs that share crucial classification information across different distributions. Nevertheless, such a strategy could be suboptimal for entirely capturing the invariant information, as the extraction of discrete structures could potentially lead to the loss of invariant information or the involvement of spurious information. In this paper, we propose an innovative framework, named Generative Risk Minimization (GRM), designed to generate an invariant subgraph for each input graph to be classified, instead of extraction. To address the challenge of optimization in the absence of optimal invariant subgraphs (i.e., ground truths), we derive a tractable form of the proposed GRM objective by introducing a latent causal variable, and its effectiveness is validated by our theoretical analysis. We further conduct extensive experiments across a variety of real-world graph datasets for both node-level and graph-level OOD generalization, and the results demonstrate the superiority of our framework GRM.
title Generative Risk Minimization for Out-of-Distribution Generalization on Graphs
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.07968