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Main Authors: Brock, Tobias, Nagler, Thomas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05742
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author Brock, Tobias
Nagler, Thomas
author_facet Brock, Tobias
Nagler, Thomas
contents Weighted empirical risk minimization is a common approach to prediction under distribution drift. This article studies its out-of-sample prediction error under nonstationarity. We provide a general decomposition of the excess risk into a learning term and an error term associated with distribution drift, and prove oracle inequalities for the learning error under mixing conditions. The learning bound holds uniformly over arbitrary weight classes and accounts for the effective sample size induced by the weight vector, the complexity of the weight and hypothesis classes, and potential data dependence. We illustrate the applicability and sharpness of our results in (auto-) regression problems with linear models, basis approximations, and neural networks, recovering minimax-optimal rates (up to logarithmic factors) when specialized to unweighted and stationary settings.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2602_05742
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Fast Rates for Nonstationary Weighted Risk Minimization
Brock, Tobias
Nagler, Thomas
Machine Learning
Statistics Theory
Weighted empirical risk minimization is a common approach to prediction under distribution drift. This article studies its out-of-sample prediction error under nonstationarity. We provide a general decomposition of the excess risk into a learning term and an error term associated with distribution drift, and prove oracle inequalities for the learning error under mixing conditions. The learning bound holds uniformly over arbitrary weight classes and accounts for the effective sample size induced by the weight vector, the complexity of the weight and hypothesis classes, and potential data dependence. We illustrate the applicability and sharpness of our results in (auto-) regression problems with linear models, basis approximations, and neural networks, recovering minimax-optimal rates (up to logarithmic factors) when specialized to unweighted and stationary settings.
title Fast Rates for Nonstationary Weighted Risk Minimization
topic Machine Learning
Statistics Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.05742