arXiv:2605.24364stat.MLcs.LG2026-05

提出统一的多校准提升理论,解决公平预测中的关键难题。

Multicalibration Boosting: Theory, Convergence, and Transferability

  • 用统一框架整合多种校准方法,放宽假设限制。
  • 证明迭代收敛到最优投影,给出停止规则与泛化保证。
  • 揭示校准与误差的权衡,指导实际应用中早停策略。

多校准通过在丰富函数族上要求预测无偏,扩展了传统校准概念,成为公平性、鲁棒性和可靠预测的重要框架。然而现有对多校准提升(MCBoost)的理论理解零散且依赖强假设。本文构建统一、精细化的MCBoost视角,涵盖多准确度、BatchGCP和BatchMVP等变体。揭示新现象:高精度模型仍可能显著偏差;强制多校准引入校准-风险权衡;早停在控制该权衡中起核心作用。理论上,在更弱、更现实条件下建立通用框架,证明迭代收敛至种群最优预测器在审计类生成累积跨度上的Bregman投影,明确校准实现的功能空间。在不同光滑性假设下导出收敛速率、有限样本保证及确保终止时多校准的合理停止规则。进一步拓展协变量偏移下的通用自适应理论,提供更广义迁移保证,并澄清多校准预测器跨域泛化的条件。这些结果为多校准提升提供更完整的理论基础与实践指引,使其兼具统一框架与可靠后处理能力。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Multicalibration extends classical calibration by requiring predictions to be unbiased over a rich collection of functions, encompassing both prediction slices and subpopulations. It has emerged as a powerful framework for fairness, robustness, and reliable prediction, yet the theoretical understanding of multicalibration boosting (MCBoost) remains fragmented and often relies on restrictive assumptions. In this work, we develop a unified and refined perspective on MCBoost that subsumes existing variants, including multiaccuracy, BatchGCP, and BatchMVP. We uncover several phenomena that provide new insights into its practical behavior: even highly accurate and flexible predictors can remain substantially miscalibrated; enforcing multicalibration introduces a calibration-risk trade-off; and early stopping plays a central role in controlling this trade-off. On the theoretical side, we establish a general framework for MCBoost under weaker and more realistic conditions. We show that the boosting iterates converge to a Bregman projection of the population-optimal predictor onto the cumulative span generated by the audit class, thereby explicitly characterizing the function space on which multicalibration is achieved. We further derive convergence rates under different smoothness assumptions, finite-sample guarantees, and principled stopping rules that ensure multicalibration at termination. Finally, we extend the theory of universal adaptability under covariate shift, providing more general transfer guarantees and clarifying when multicalibrated predictors generalize across domains. These results provide a more complete theoretical foundation and practical guidance for multicalibration boosting, positioning it as both a unifying framework and a reliable post-processing approach for modern predictive models.

多校准公平学习理论分析模型泛化

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