提出高效算法计算校准距离,揭示其计算复杂性边界。
Computational and Statistical Hardness of Calibration Distance
- 针对均匀边缘无噪声情形,给出精确高效算法。
- 样本量需 Θ(1/ε³) 才能保证估计误差 ≤ ε。
- 首次证明一般情况下的计算为 NP 难,适用于理论研究者。
校准距离由 Błasiok 等人(STOC 2023)提出,是衡量概率预测器偏差的核心指标。本文研究在已知数据分布或仅有样本访问条件下,该量的计算与估计问题。当分布具有均匀边际且标签无噪声时,我们提出一个高效算法实现精确计算,优于 Qiao 与 Zheng(COLT 2024)的 $O(1/ ext{√}| ext{X}|)$ 加法近似。令人意外的是,一旦移除任一假设,问题即变为 $ extsf{NP}$-难。我们进一步将算法扩展至一般情况的多项式时间近似方案。对于估计问题,证明了 $Θ(1/ε^3)$ 样本足以使经验校准距离上界不超过真实值加 ε。相反,基于学习的基线方法不可避免地需依赖域大小的多项式样本量才能实现双向估计。正向结果基于对分布与目标预测器的简单稀疏化,显著压缩搜索空间并增强估计集中性。为证明硬度结果,我们引入新技巧以证校准距离下界——此问题一般情况下因 $ extsf{co-NP}$-完全性而难以处理。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
The distance from calibration, introduced by Błasiok, Gopalan, Hu, and Nakkiran (STOC 2023), has recently emerged as a central measure of miscalibration for probabilistic predictors. We study the fundamental problems of computing and estimating this quantity, given either an exact description of the data distribution or only sample access to it. We give an efficient algorithm that exactly computes the calibration distance when the distribution has a uniform marginal and noiseless labels, which improves the $O(1/\sqrt{|\mathcal{X}|})$ additive approximation of Qiao and Zheng (COLT 2024) for this special case. Perhaps surprisingly, the problem becomes $\mathsf{NP}$-hard when either of the two assumptions is removed. We extend our algorithm to a polynomial-time approximation scheme for the general case. For the estimation problem, we show that $Θ(1/ε^3)$ samples are sufficient and necessary for the empirical calibration distance to be upper bounded by the true distance plus $ε$. In contrast, a polynomial dependence on the domain size -- incurred by the learning-based baseline -- is unavoidable for two-sided estimation. Our positive results are based on simple sparsifications of both the distribution and the target predictor, which significantly reduce the search space for computation and lead to stronger concentration for the estimation problem. To prove the hardness results, we introduce new techniques for certifying lower bounds on the calibration distance -- a problem that is hard in general due to its $\textsf{co-NP}$-completeness.
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