arXiv Machine Learning

Optimal and Provable Calibration in High-Dimensional Binary Classification: Angular Calibration and Platt Scaling

arXiv:2502. 15131v4 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We study the fundamental problem of calibrating a linear binary classifier of the form $\sigma(\hat{w}^\top x)$, where the feature vector $x$ is Gaussian, $\sigma$ is a link function, and $\hat{w}$ is an estimator of the true linear weight $w^\star$.

arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 13

Linear-Core Surrogates: Smooth Loss Functions with Linear Rates for Classification and Structured Prediction

arXiv:2604. 27742v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: A fundamental dichotomy in the theory of classification sets smoothness against statistical efficiency: smooth surrogate losses such as the logistic loss enable fast $O(1/T)$ optimization but yield slow square-root $H$-consistency bounds, while piecewise-linear losses like the Hinge loss achieve optimal linear $H$-consistency rates but are non-differentiable.

By Mehryar Mohri, Yutao Zhong
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 3

Bayes-Optimal BER and AUC: Estimation and Evaluation of Estimators

The paper introduces soft‑label‑based estimators for the Bayes‑optimal balanced error rate (BER) and area under the ROC curve (AUC), extending from a clean setting with known class priors to a realistic scenario with unknown priors and corrupted soft labels. It also adapts the FeeBee evaluation framework to assess these estimators without needing the true optimum, providing practical evaluation scores for any estimator of optimal BER or AUC. Experiments on synthetic and real datasets confirm the effectiveness of both the estimators and the evaluation method.

By Ryota Ushio, Takashi Ishida, Masashi Sugiyama
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 23

Optimal Recalibration of an Online Predictor

arXiv:2607. 19689v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We study the problem of recalibrating an online predictor [KE17, OKS24]: given an arbitrary "hint" sequence of forecasts, the learner must output new predictions that are calibrated while incurring small excess error relative to the original forecasts, under a proper loss.

By Lunjia Hu, Kevin Tian, Chutong Yang
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 5

How abundant are good interpolators?

arXiv:2606. 06469v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Let $S$ be the set of unit norm linear classifiers $\theta \in \mathbb{R}^d$ which correctly classify every point of a labeled dataset $(X_i,y_i)_{i=1}^n$, $X_i \in \mathbb{R}^d$, $y_i \in \{-1,+1\}$, with a possibly negative margin $\kappa$ fixed in advance.

By August Y. Chen, Ahmed El Alaoui
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 4

A Closed-Form Formula for Consistent Lipschitz Regression on Metric Spaces with Sparse Neural Network Realizations

arXiv:2609. 03129v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Several classical machine-learning methods, such as KRRs and SVRs, are both computationally and analytically tractable since their estimators either admit closed-form expressions or are obtained by minimizing convex training objectives; neither feature is generally available for deep neural networks.

By Ruiyang Hong, Hrad Ghoukasian, Anastasis Kratsios
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 28

Common Geodesics Do Not Guarantee Fisher Consistency of the Structured SVM: Minimal Counterexamples and a Tree-Metric Classification

The paper demonstrates that the common-geodesic condition—where every output triple shares a geodesic point in a metric—does not ensure Fisher consistency for the structured SVM with the standard coordinate-wise argmax decoder. It presents minimal counterexamples, including a four-output star and a tree-metric classification, showing that only path-shaped trees maintain argmax consistency. The study also identifies the smallest full-support counterexamples and provides exact primal-dual certificates for all optimality claims.

By Jintao Fei, Jiangying Luo