Online selective conformal inference: adaptive scores, convergence rate and optimality

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Humbert, Pierre, Gazin, Ulysse, Heller, Ruth, Roquain, Etienne
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Humbert, Pierre
Gazin, Ulysse
Heller, Ruth
Roquain, Etienne
author_facet Humbert, Pierre
Gazin, Ulysse
Heller, Ruth
Roquain, Etienne
contents In a supervised online setting, quantifying uncertainty has been proposed in the seminal work of \cite{gibbs2021adaptive}. For any given point-prediction algorithm, their method (ACI) produces a conformal prediction set with an average missed coverage getting close to a pre-specified level $α$ for a long time horizon. We introduce an extended version of this algorithm, called OnlineSCI, allowing the user to additionally select times where such an inference should be made. OnlineSCI encompasses several prominent online selective tasks, such as building prediction intervals for extreme outcomes, classification with abstention, and online testing. While OnlineSCI controls the average missed coverage on the selected in an adversarial setting, our theoretical results also show that it controls the instantaneous error rate (IER) at the selected times, up to a non-asymptotical remainder term. Importantly, our theory covers the case where OnlineSCI updates the point-prediction algorithm at each time step, a property which we refer to as {\it adaptive} capability. We show that the adaptive versions of OnlineSCI can convergence to an optimal solution and provide an explicit convergence rate in each of the aforementioned application cases, under specific mild conditions. Finally, the favorable behavior of OnlineSCI in practice is illustrated by numerical experiments.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_10336
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Online selective conformal inference: adaptive scores, convergence rate and optimality
Humbert, Pierre
Gazin, Ulysse
Heller, Ruth
Roquain, Etienne
Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
In a supervised online setting, quantifying uncertainty has been proposed in the seminal work of \cite{gibbs2021adaptive}. For any given point-prediction algorithm, their method (ACI) produces a conformal prediction set with an average missed coverage getting close to a pre-specified level $α$ for a long time horizon. We introduce an extended version of this algorithm, called OnlineSCI, allowing the user to additionally select times where such an inference should be made. OnlineSCI encompasses several prominent online selective tasks, such as building prediction intervals for extreme outcomes, classification with abstention, and online testing. While OnlineSCI controls the average missed coverage on the selected in an adversarial setting, our theoretical results also show that it controls the instantaneous error rate (IER) at the selected times, up to a non-asymptotical remainder term. Importantly, our theory covers the case where OnlineSCI updates the point-prediction algorithm at each time step, a property which we refer to as {\it adaptive} capability. We show that the adaptive versions of OnlineSCI can convergence to an optimal solution and provide an explicit convergence rate in each of the aforementioned application cases, under specific mild conditions. Finally, the favorable behavior of OnlineSCI in practice is illustrated by numerical experiments.
title Online selective conformal inference: adaptive scores, convergence rate and optimality
topic Statistics Theory
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.10336