arXiv:2606.29516cs.LGstat.ML2026-06

将专家对特征重要性的判断融入最优子集选择,提升模型可解释性。

A Mathematical Optimization Approach for Expert-Informed Bayesian Best Subset Selection

  • 用专家概率构建先验,通过最大后验框架优化选子集
  • 专家意见以泊松二项分布等方法聚合,生成特征入选概率
  • 适合有领域知识的科研人员,增强模型决策可信度

统计建模的核心挑战之一是识别真实回归模型中应包含的特征子集。经典最优子集选择问题虽可通过混合整数优化(MIO)求得全局最优稀疏解,但仅依赖观测数据,未利用专家知识。在实际应用中,领域专家可对候选预测变量的重要性进行有意义的排序或评分,但现有方法无法直接整合此类概率性专家评估。本文提出专家隐含贝叶斯最优子集(EBBS),通过最大后验(MAP)框架,将多源专家的概率估计纳入MIO最优子集问题。多位专家的意见通过泊松二项分布(用于边际概率)、成对胜率(用于成对比较)或归一化平均排名(用于序次排序)聚合为每个特征的先验概率。该概率以对数几率惩罚项形式进入目标函数,平滑地鼓励或抑制特征的选择,符合专家共识。本文给出了MAP公式的解析推导,并分析其理论性质;当所有专家无明确观点时,模型退化为经典最优子集。合成与真实数据上的实证结果即将发布。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

A central challenge in statistical modeling is identifying the subset of features that belong in the true regression model. The classical best subset selection problem, recently made tractable via mixed-integer optimization (MIO), finds the globally optimal sparse solution. It does not, however, make use of any information beyond the observed data. In many applied settings, domain experts can meaningfully rank or score the relevance of candidate predictors, yet no existing framework integrates such probabilistic expert assessments directly into the best-subsets objective. This paper presents Expert-Implied Bayesian Best Subsets (EBBS), a method that incorporates domain-expert probability estimates of feature relevance into the MIO best-subsets problem through a maximum a posteriori (MAP) framework. Expert views from multiple respondents are aggregated into a single prior probability per feature using the Poisson binomial distribution for marginal probability estimates, the pairwise win rate for pairwise comparisons, or the normalized mean rank for ordinal rankings. This probability enters the objective function as a log-odds penalty term that smoothly encourages or discourages the selection of each feature consistent with the expert consensus. This paper provides analytic derivations of the MAP formulation and characterizes its theoretical properties. The proposed model reduces to Best Subsets when experts all have no views. Empirical results on synthetic and real datasets are forthcoming.

贝叶斯方法特征选择专家知识优化

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