arXiv:2608.23638stat.MLcs.LG2026-08

让不同分析员的预测结果完全一致,同时保证统计可靠性。

Replicable Conformal Prediction

  • 用共享随机种子和粗粒度网格向上取整阈值,实现可复现的预测集。
  • 在保证覆盖率的前提下,预测集大小仅小幅增加,且随数据量增大趋于最优。
  • 适合需要审计、审批或跨站点部署的高可靠性场景,防止人为操控结果。

两名分析师在独立样本上校准相同预测模型时,每次生成的预测集都不同,因为校准阈值继承了数据的随机性。当部署需审计、缓存或跨站点审批时,这种不稳定性代价高昂:无法验证两次校准是否产生相同结果。本文探讨两个问题:何时独立校准能产生相同分类器?达成一致需付出什么代价?完全一致不可能实现,因为几乎总返回同一答案的程序无法对所有分布保持有效性;而依赖共享随机性又会忽略数据。通过共享单一随机种子,并将校准阈值向上取整至粗粒度共享网格,可解决矛盾:部署的分类器在任意期望概率下均一致,覆盖率保证不变,代价是预测集大小与校准数据量的定量增加。匹配的下界证明无其他阈值方法成本更低,且该方法唯一调参常数在渐进下消失。若无共享种子,固定网格仍使所有分析师限于两个相邻分类器,任何方法都无法更好。可复现性还可防操纵:选择多个重校准中最有利的结果对可复现分类器影响极小,而标准共形预测则会无声地降低覆盖。在真实ImageNet输出、四医院数据分片及四种语言模型上的实验结果符合理论,包括测量到的样本成本边界。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Two analysts who calibrate the same predictive model on independent samples will deploy different prediction sets every time, because the calibration threshold inherits the randomness of the data. Wherever deployments must be audited, cached, or approved across sites, this instability is costly: no one can verify that two calibrations produced the same object. We ask two questions: when can independent calibrations yield the identical classifier, and what must that agreement cost? Perfect agreement is impossible, since a procedure that almost always returns one fixed answer cannot remain valid for every distribution, and exact agreement through shared randomness forces the procedure to ignore its data. Sharing a single random seed and rounding the calibrated threshold up to a coarse shared grid resolves the tension: the deployed classifier becomes identical across analysts with any desired probability, coverage guarantees survive, and the price is a quantified increase in set size and calibration data. Matching lower bounds show that no threshold method can pay less, and the method's one tuning constant vanishes asymptotically. Without any shared seed, a fixed grid still confines all analysts to two adjacent classifiers, and no method does better. Replicability also blocks gaming: selecting the most favorable of many recalibrations barely moves a replicable classifier, while the same selection silently undercovers standard conformal prediction. Experiments on real ImageNet outputs, a four-hospital site split, and four language-model families match the theory, including the measured sample-cost frontier.

共形预测可复现性模型可靠性统计保证

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