COPA: Comparing the incomparable in multi-objective model evaluation

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Javaloy, Adrián, Vergari, Antonio, Valera, Isabel
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Javaloy, Adrián
Vergari, Antonio
Valera, Isabel
author_facet Javaloy, Adrián
Vergari, Antonio
Valera, Isabel
contents In machine learning (ML), we often need to choose one among hundreds of trained ML models at hand, based on various objectives such as accuracy, robustness, fairness or scalability. However, it is often unclear how to compare, aggregate and, ultimately, trade-off these objectives, making it a time-consuming task that requires expert knowledge, as objectives may be measured in different units and scales. In this work, we investigate how objectives can be automatically normalized and aggregated to systematically help the user navigate their Pareto front. To this end, we make incomparable objectives comparable using their cumulative functions, approximated by their relative rankings. As a result, our proposed approach, COPA, can aggregate them while matching user-specific preferences, allowing practitioners to meaningfully navigate and search for models in the Pareto front. We demonstrate the potential impact of COPA in both model selection and benchmarking tasks across diverse ML areas such as fair ML, domain generalization, AutoML and foundation models, where classical ways to normalize and aggregate objectives fall short.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_14321
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle COPA: Comparing the incomparable in multi-objective model evaluation
Javaloy, Adrián
Vergari, Antonio
Valera, Isabel
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
In machine learning (ML), we often need to choose one among hundreds of trained ML models at hand, based on various objectives such as accuracy, robustness, fairness or scalability. However, it is often unclear how to compare, aggregate and, ultimately, trade-off these objectives, making it a time-consuming task that requires expert knowledge, as objectives may be measured in different units and scales. In this work, we investigate how objectives can be automatically normalized and aggregated to systematically help the user navigate their Pareto front. To this end, we make incomparable objectives comparable using their cumulative functions, approximated by their relative rankings. As a result, our proposed approach, COPA, can aggregate them while matching user-specific preferences, allowing practitioners to meaningfully navigate and search for models in the Pareto front. We demonstrate the potential impact of COPA in both model selection and benchmarking tasks across diverse ML areas such as fair ML, domain generalization, AutoML and foundation models, where classical ways to normalize and aggregate objectives fall short.
title COPA: Comparing the incomparable in multi-objective model evaluation
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.14321