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Related papers: A Theory of Selective Prediction

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We present a new adaptive algorithm for learning discrete distributions under distribution drift. In this setting, we observe a sequence of independent samples from a discrete distribution that is changing over time, and the goal is to…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-11 Alessio Mazzetto

Selective classification allows models to abstain from making predictions (e.g., say "I don't know") when in doubt in order to obtain better effective accuracy. While typical selective models can be effective at producing more accurate…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-06-24 Adam Fisch , Tommi Jaakkola , Regina Barzilay

Predicting the winner of an election is a favorite problem both for news media pundits and computational social choice theorists. Since it is often infeasible to elicit the preferences of all the voters in a typical prediction scenario, a…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2016-04-21 Arnab Bhattacharyya , Palash Dey

Providing users with alternatives to choose from is an essential component in many online platforms, making the accurate prediction of choice vital to their success. A renewed interest in learning choice models has led to significant…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2020-01-22 Nir Rosenfeld , Kojin Oshiba , Yaron Singer

The forward prediction problem for a binary time series $\{X_n\}_{n=0}^{\infty}$ is to estimate the probability that $X_{n+1}=1$ based on the observations $X_i$, $0\le i\le n$ without prior knowledge of the distribution of the process…

Probability · Mathematics 2008-06-19 Gusztav Morvai

We introduce a framework for statistical estimation that leverages knowledge of how samples are collected but makes no distributional assumptions on the data values. Specifically, we consider a population of elements $[n]={1,\ldots,n}$ with…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2020-10-27 Justin Y. Chen , Gregory Valiant , Paul Valiant

Algorithms with (machine-learned) predictions is a powerful framework for combining traditional worst-case algorithms with modern machine learning. However, the vast majority of work in this space assumes that the prediction itself is…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-11-26 Michael Dinitz , Sungjin Im , Thomas Lavastida , Benjamin Moseley , Aidin Niaparast , Sergei Vassilvitskii

We present a simple randomized procedure for the prediction of a binary sequence. The algorithm uses ideas from recent developments of the theory of the prediction of individual sequences. We show that if the sequence is a realization of a…

Statistics Theory · Mathematics 2008-06-19 L. Györfi , G. Lugosi , G. Morvai

A prediction interval covers a future observation from a random process in repeated sampling, and is typically constructed by identifying a pivotal quantity that is also an ancillary statistic. Analogously, a tolerance interval covers a…

Methodology · Statistics 2022-01-19 Geoffrey S Johnson

The machine learning literature contains several constructions for prediction intervals that are intuitively reasonable but ultimately ad-hoc in that they do not come with provable performance guarantees. We present methods from the…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2020-02-25 Danijel Kivaranovic , Kory D. Johnson , Hannes Leeb

Selection bias arises when the probability that an observation enters a dataset depends on variables related to the quantities of interest, leading to systematic distortions in estimation and uncertainty quantification. For example, in…

Randomized algorithms, such as randomized sketching or stochastic optimization, are a promising approach to ease the computational burden in analyzing large datasets. However, randomized algorithms also produce non-deterministic outputs,…

Methodology · Statistics 2025-05-13 Zhixiang Zhang , Sokbae Lee , Edgar Dobriban

As artificial intelligence and machine learning tools become more accessible, and scientists face new obstacles to data collection (e.g., rising costs, declining survey response rates), researchers increasingly use predictions from…

Machine Learning · Statistics 2025-12-08 Stephen Salerno , Kentaro Hoffman , Awan Afiaz , Anna Neufeld , Tyler H. McCormick , Jeffrey T. Leek

We consider the \textsf{Unit Interval Selection} problem in the one-pass random order streaming model. Here, an algorithm is presented a sequence of $n$ unit-length intervals on the line that arrive in uniform random order, and the…

Data Structures and Algorithms · Computer Science 2026-03-11 Cezar-Mihail Alexandru , Adithya Diddapur , Magnús M. Halldórsson , Christian Konrad , Kheeran K. Naidu

Explicit finite-sample statistical guarantees on model performance are an important ingredient in responsible machine learning. Previous work has focused mainly on bounding either the expected loss of a predictor or the probability that an…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-03-07 Zhun Deng , Thomas P. Zollo , Jake C. Snell , Toniann Pitassi , Richard Zemel

We consider the problem of hypothesis testing for discrete distributions. In the standard model, where we have sample access to an underlying distribution $p$, extensive research has established optimal bounds for uniformity testing,…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-12-03 Maryam Aliakbarpour , Piotr Indyk , Ronitt Rubinfeld , Sandeep Silwal

We show an essentially tight bound on the number of adaptively chosen statistical queries that a computationally efficient algorithm can answer accurately given $n$ samples from an unknown distribution. A statistical query asks for the…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2015-02-23 Thomas Steinke , Jonathan Ullman

In regression problems where there is no known true underlying model, conformal prediction methods enable prediction intervals to be constructed without any assumptions on the distribution of the underlying data, except that the training…

Methodology · Statistics 2023-01-31 Wenyu Chen , Kelli-Jean Chun , Rina Foygel Barber

The research area of algorithms with predictions has seen recent success showing how to incorporate machine learning into algorithm design to improve performance when the predictions are correct, while retaining worst-case guarantees when…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-12-06 Michael Dinitz , Sungjin Im , Thomas Lavastida , Benjamin Moseley , Sergei Vassilvitskii

This article describes a robust algorithm to estimate a conditional probability density f(t|x) as a non-parametric smooth regression function. It is based on a neural network and the Bayesian interpretation of the network output as a…

Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability · Physics 2007-05-23 Michael Feindt