提出新框架缓解排序模型的位置偏差问题。
A Control Function Framework for Mitigating Position Bias in Learning to Rank Systems
- 用残差的外生变化构建控制函数,分两阶段修正位置偏差。
- 在基准和工业数据集上均优于现有最优方法。
- 无需显式倾向估计,适配主流排序算法且支持调参优化。
学习排序(LTR)系统常依赖用户点击等隐式反馈,因其易获取且可反映用户偏好。然而,直接使用此类数据训练模型时,因系统性偏差导致性能不佳,其中位置偏差尤为显著:排名靠前的项目无论相关性如何,都更易获得点击。为此,本文提出一种基于控制函数的两阶段新框架。第一阶段利用排序过程残差中的外生变异,第二阶段将其融入点击模型以校正位置相关扭曲。与现有方法相比,本方法无需显式倾向估计,支持非线性排序模型,可灵活集成至任意先进排序算法中。此外,还提出一种验证点击去偏策略,使在无无偏验证数据条件下仍能可靠调参。实验表明,该方法在基准数据集和真实工业数据集上均超越当前最优位置偏差纠正方法。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Learning-to-rank (LTR) systems commonly depend on implicit feedback, such as user clicks, because it is easy to collect and can serve as a valuable signal of user preferences. However, directly optimizing ranking models using implicit feedback data often yields suboptimal performance because such data is inherently skewed by systematic biases. Among these biases, position bias is particularly pervasive: items ranked higher tend to receive disproportionately more interactions, regardless of their actual relevance. To address this, we introduce a novel two-stage framework based on control functions. In the first stage, we utilize exogenous variation from the residuals of the ranking process, which are then incorporated into a second stage click model to account for position-dependent distortions. In contrast to existing methods, our approach avoids explicit propensity estimation, supports nonlinear ranking models, and can be flexibly incorporated into any state-of-the-art ranking algorithm for position bias correction. We also propose a debiasing strategy for validation clicks that enables reliable hyperparameter tuning in the absence of unbiased validation data. Empirical results show that our method outperforms state-of-the-art position bias correction methods on both benchmark and real-world industrial datasets.
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