Non-exchangeable Conformal Prediction with Optimal Transport: Tackling Distribution Shifts with Unlabeled Data

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Correia, Alvaro H. C., Louizos, Christos
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Correia, Alvaro H. C.
Louizos, Christos
author_facet Correia, Alvaro H. C.
Louizos, Christos
contents Conformal prediction is a distribution-free uncertainty quantification method that has gained popularity in the machine learning community due to its finite-sample guarantees and ease of use. Its most common variant, dubbed split conformal prediction, is also computationally efficient as it boils down to collecting statistics of the model predictions on some calibration data not yet seen by the model. Nonetheless, these guarantees only hold if the calibration and test data are exchangeable, a condition that is difficult to verify and often violated in practice due to so-called distribution shifts. The literature is rife with methods to mitigate the loss in coverage in this non-exchangeable setting, but these methods require some prior information on the type of distribution shift to be expected at test time. In this work, we study this problem via a new perspective, through the lens of optimal transport, and show that it is possible to estimate the loss in coverage and mitigate arbitrary distribution shifts, offering a principled and broadly applicable solution.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_10425
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Non-exchangeable Conformal Prediction with Optimal Transport: Tackling Distribution Shifts with Unlabeled Data
Correia, Alvaro H. C.
Louizos, Christos
Machine Learning
Conformal prediction is a distribution-free uncertainty quantification method that has gained popularity in the machine learning community due to its finite-sample guarantees and ease of use. Its most common variant, dubbed split conformal prediction, is also computationally efficient as it boils down to collecting statistics of the model predictions on some calibration data not yet seen by the model. Nonetheless, these guarantees only hold if the calibration and test data are exchangeable, a condition that is difficult to verify and often violated in practice due to so-called distribution shifts. The literature is rife with methods to mitigate the loss in coverage in this non-exchangeable setting, but these methods require some prior information on the type of distribution shift to be expected at test time. In this work, we study this problem via a new perspective, through the lens of optimal transport, and show that it is possible to estimate the loss in coverage and mitigate arbitrary distribution shifts, offering a principled and broadly applicable solution.
title Non-exchangeable Conformal Prediction with Optimal Transport: Tackling Distribution Shifts with Unlabeled Data
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.10425