构建大规模校准评估基准,帮模型输出更可靠的置信度。
CalArena: A Large-Scale Post-Hoc Calibration Benchmark
- 设计统一框架,覆盖近2000次实验,涵盖表格与视觉任务。
- 发现平滑校准函数优于分箱法,多分类专用方法在高维场景更优。
- 适合研究校准方法、提升模型可信度的从业者使用。
可靠的概率估计在众多机器学习应用中至关重要,但现代分类器常存在校准不足问题。后处理校准提供了一种简单且广泛使用的解决方案,但方法众多且评估规模小、标准不一,难以判断实际效果。本文提出一个大规模、标准化的后处理校准基准(CalArena),涵盖近2000次实验,涉及表格数据与计算机视觉任务,包括二分类、多分类及大规模分类场景。基准整合了经典模型、现代深度学习架构和基础模型的预测结果,并在统一框架内提供数十种校准方法的可复现实现。我们主张以合理评分规则下的后处理改进(PHI)作为对比校准方法的理论依据,能同时捕捉校准质量与对预测性能的潜在损害。基于此框架,我们开展了迄今最全面的后处理校准实证研究。结果显示跨领域一致规律:平滑校准函数优于分箱法,高维场景下专用多分类方法至关重要,通用机器学习模型未经校准特化设计则表现不佳。为促进后续研究,我们公开所有数据、代码与评估工具,提供即插即用的校准基准。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Reliable probability estimates are critical in many machine learning applications, yet modern classifiers are often poorly calibrated. Post-hoc calibration provides a simple and widely used solution, but the large number of proposed methods, combined with small-scale and inconsistent evaluations, makes it difficult to determine which approaches are truly effective in practice. We introduce a large-scale, standardized benchmark for post-hoc calibration, covering nearly 2000 experiments across tabular and computer vision tasks, including binary, multiclass, and large-scale classification settings. Our benchmark aggregates predictions from a diverse set of classical models, modern deep learning architectures, and foundation models, and provides unified, reproducible implementations of dozens of calibration methods within a common evaluation framework. We argue that Post-Hoc Improvement (PHI) in proper scoring rules offers a principled alternative to traditional calibration error estimators for comparing post-hoc methods, capturing both calibration quality and potential degradation to the model's predictive performance. Using this framework, we conduct the most comprehensive empirical study of post-hoc calibration to date. Our results reveal consistent patterns across domains: smooth calibration functions outperform binning-based approaches, dedicated multiclass methods are essential in high-dimensional settings, and generic machine learning models are not competitive without calibration-specific design. To facilitate future research, we release all data, code, and evaluation tools, providing a plug-and-play benchmark for developing and comparing calibration methods.
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