Optimal Empirical Risk Minimization under Temporal Distribution Shifts

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Jeong, Yujin, Johari, Ramesh, Rothenhäusler, Dominik, Fox, Emily
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866911062144581632
author Jeong, Yujin
Johari, Ramesh
Rothenhäusler, Dominik
Fox, Emily
author_facet Jeong, Yujin
Johari, Ramesh
Rothenhäusler, Dominik
Fox, Emily
contents Temporal distribution shifts pose a key challenge for machine learning models trained and deployed in dynamically evolving environments. This paper introduces RIDER (RIsk minimization under Dynamically Evolving Regimes) which derives optimally-weighted empirical risk minimization procedures under temporal distribution shifts. Our approach is theoretically grounded in the random distribution shift model, where random shifts arise as a superposition of numerous unpredictable changes in the data-generating process. We show that common weighting schemes, such as pooling all data, exponentially weighting data, and using only the most recent data, emerge naturally as special cases in our framework. We demonstrate that RIDER consistently improves out-of-sample predictive performance when applied as a fine-tuning step on the Yearbook dataset, across a range of benchmark methods in Wild-Time. Moreover, we show that RIDER outperforms standard weighting strategies in two other real-world tasks: predicting stock market volatility and forecasting ride durations in NYC taxi data.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_13287
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Optimal Empirical Risk Minimization under Temporal Distribution Shifts
Jeong, Yujin
Johari, Ramesh
Rothenhäusler, Dominik
Fox, Emily
Methodology
Machine Learning
Temporal distribution shifts pose a key challenge for machine learning models trained and deployed in dynamically evolving environments. This paper introduces RIDER (RIsk minimization under Dynamically Evolving Regimes) which derives optimally-weighted empirical risk minimization procedures under temporal distribution shifts. Our approach is theoretically grounded in the random distribution shift model, where random shifts arise as a superposition of numerous unpredictable changes in the data-generating process. We show that common weighting schemes, such as pooling all data, exponentially weighting data, and using only the most recent data, emerge naturally as special cases in our framework. We demonstrate that RIDER consistently improves out-of-sample predictive performance when applied as a fine-tuning step on the Yearbook dataset, across a range of benchmark methods in Wild-Time. Moreover, we show that RIDER outperforms standard weighting strategies in two other real-world tasks: predicting stock market volatility and forecasting ride durations in NYC taxi data.
title Optimal Empirical Risk Minimization under Temporal Distribution Shifts
topic Methodology
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.13287