首次揭示图神经网络在分布偏移下的校准机制,给出无需标签的校准方法。
When does distribution shift break graph neural networks calibration?

- 提出校准误差由图结构变化与特征质量决定的单标量理论公式。
- 发现同质偏移下全局温度校准最优,解释为何节点级校准无益。
- 设计无标签源校准方法STAC,实测显著提升校准性能。
图神经网络(GNNs)在现实应用中面临不可避免的分布偏移。然而,分布偏移如何影响模型校准(即预测置信度与实际准确率的一致性)仍不明确,现有校准方法通常依赖部署分布的带标签验证数据。本文首次提供GNN在分布偏移下的闭式理论刻画,证明校准受单一标量控制,该量显式依赖源图与目标图间的结构变化及特征质量。该理论可精确判断模型何时过自信、欠自信或保持校准,并直接导出最优温度缩放策略。进一步扩展至对称归一化的图卷积网络、多分类及协变量偏移场景,推导出期望校准误差的理论上界。分析表明,在同质分布偏移下,单一全局温度理论上最优,为复杂节点级再校准方法无效提供了原理解释。基于此,提出无需源标签和目标标签的校准方法STAC。合成基准测试显示校准显著改善;五个真实图数据集上的评估表明,尽管理论强大,无目标标签时实现可靠校准仍具挑战。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Graph neural networks (GNNs) are increasingly deployed in real-world applications where distribution shift is un-avoidable. However, how such shifts affect model calibration, defined as the agreement between predictive confidence and actual accuracy, remains poorly understood, and existing graph calibration methods typically rely on labeled validation data from the deployment distribution. In this work, I present the first closed-form theoretical characterization of GNN calibration under distribution shift. I show that calibration is governed by a single scalar quantity that explicitly depends on structural changes between the source and target graphs, as well as feature quality. This characterization precisely identifies when a model becomes over-confident, under-confident, or remains calibrated, and directly yields the optimal temperature scaling strategy. I further extend the analysis to graph convolutional networks with symmetric normalization, multi-class classification, and covariate shift, and derive a theoretical upper bound on the expected calibration error. My analysis also reveals that, under homogeneous distribution shift, a single global temperature is theoretically optimal, providing a principled explanation for why more complex node-wise recalibration methods offer no additional benefit. Building on these theoretical insights, I propose STAC, a source-free, label-free calibration method. Experiments on synthetic benchmarks demonstrate substantial calibration improvements, while evaluations on five real-world graph datasets show that reliable calibration without target labels remains challenging despite the strong predictive power of the theory.
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