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Multi-level Monte Carlo Dropout for Efficient Uncertainty Quantification

Machine Learning 2026-01-21 v1 Computation Machine Learning

Abstract

We develop a multilevel Monte Carlo (MLMC) framework for uncertainty quantification with Monte Carlo dropout. Treating dropout masks as a source of epistemic randomness, we define a fidelity hierarchy by the number of stochastic forward passes used to estimate predictive moments. We construct coupled coarse--fine estimators by reusing dropout masks across fidelities, yielding telescoping MLMC estimators for both predictive means and predictive variances that remain unbiased for the corresponding dropout-induced quantities while reducing sampling variance at fixed evaluation budget. We derive explicit bias, variance and effective cost expressions, together with sample-allocation rules across levels. Numerical experiments on forward and inverse PINNs--Uzawa benchmarks confirm the predicted variance rates and demonstrate efficiency gains over single-level MC-dropout at matched cost.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2601.13272,
  title  = {Multi-level Monte Carlo Dropout for Efficient Uncertainty Quantification},
  author = {Aaron Pim and Tristan Pryer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.13272},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

26 pages, 11 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-01T09:11:12.573Z