Enforcing Calibration in Multi-Output Probabilistic Regression with Pre-rank Regularization

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Desobry, Naomi, Zhalieva, Elnura, Taieb, Souhaib Ben
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Desobry, Naomi
Zhalieva, Elnura
Taieb, Souhaib Ben
author_facet Desobry, Naomi
Zhalieva, Elnura
Taieb, Souhaib Ben
contents Probabilistic models must be well calibrated to support reliable decision-making. While calibration in single-output regression is well studied, defining and achieving multivariate calibration in multi-output regression remains considerably more challenging. The existing literature on multivariate calibration primarily focuses on diagnostic tools based on pre-rank functions, which are projections that reduce multivariate prediction-observation pairs to univariate summaries to detect specific types of miscalibration. In this work, we go beyond diagnostics and introduce a general regularization framework to enforce multivariate calibration during training for arbitrary pre-rank functions. This framework encompasses existing approaches such as highest density region calibration and copula calibration. Our method enforces calibration by penalizing deviations of the projected probability integral transforms (PITs) from the uniform distribution, and can be added as a regularization term to the loss function of any probabilistic predictor. Specifically, we propose a regularization loss that jointly enforces both marginal and multivariate pre-rank calibration. We also introduce a new PCA-based pre-rank that captures calibration along directions of maximal variance in the predictive distribution, while also enabling dimensionality reduction. Across 18 real-world multi-output regression datasets, we show that unregularized models are consistently miscalibrated, and that our methods significantly improve calibration across all pre-rank functions without sacrificing predictive accuracy.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_21273
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Enforcing Calibration in Multi-Output Probabilistic Regression with Pre-rank Regularization
Desobry, Naomi
Zhalieva, Elnura
Taieb, Souhaib Ben
Machine Learning
Probabilistic models must be well calibrated to support reliable decision-making. While calibration in single-output regression is well studied, defining and achieving multivariate calibration in multi-output regression remains considerably more challenging. The existing literature on multivariate calibration primarily focuses on diagnostic tools based on pre-rank functions, which are projections that reduce multivariate prediction-observation pairs to univariate summaries to detect specific types of miscalibration. In this work, we go beyond diagnostics and introduce a general regularization framework to enforce multivariate calibration during training for arbitrary pre-rank functions. This framework encompasses existing approaches such as highest density region calibration and copula calibration. Our method enforces calibration by penalizing deviations of the projected probability integral transforms (PITs) from the uniform distribution, and can be added as a regularization term to the loss function of any probabilistic predictor. Specifically, we propose a regularization loss that jointly enforces both marginal and multivariate pre-rank calibration. We also introduce a new PCA-based pre-rank that captures calibration along directions of maximal variance in the predictive distribution, while also enabling dimensionality reduction. Across 18 real-world multi-output regression datasets, we show that unregularized models are consistently miscalibrated, and that our methods significantly improve calibration across all pre-rank functions without sacrificing predictive accuracy.
title Enforcing Calibration in Multi-Output Probabilistic Regression with Pre-rank Regularization
topic Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.21273