arXiv Machine Learning

Robust Non-Clairvoyant Scheduling with Classification Models

The paper tackles the single‑machine scheduling problem of minimizing total completion time in a non‑clairvoyant setting, where job processing times are unknown until completion. It introduces a robustness framework that uses a classification model’s confusion matrix to describe uncertainty as permutations within predicted classes, avoiding the computational challenges of traditional robust metrics. The authors present an optimal non‑adaptive strategy for three robust criteria and show that adaptive and randomized algorithms can outperform it when the confusion matrix has certain structural properties.

arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 17

Efficient Robust Learning at the Information-Theoretic Limit

The paper presents a polynomial‑time algorithm for robustly learning Boolean concept classes with respect to a fixed distribution, achieving the optimal error rate of η + ε where η is the noise rate. It builds on Blanc’s earlier, computationally inefficient algorithm and introduces no‑regret learners to overcome the previous limitations. Additionally, the authors provide an efficient method that does not require an ERM oracle for any function class admitting sandwiching polynomials under hypercontractive distributions, including a first polynomial‑time solution for learning halfspaces with Gaussian marginals at error η + ε.

By Adam R. Klivans, Konstantinos Stavropoulos, Sergei Tikhonov, Arsen Vasilyan
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 22

Classification with Abstention Under Class-Conditional Error Constraints

The paper investigates binary classification with abstention under separate class‑conditional error constraints, aiming to minimize abstention while keeping both error types below specified thresholds. It derives the distribution‑free minimax rate of excess abstention risk, introduces surrogate‑loss formulations for computational feasibility with models like neural networks, and provides finite‑sample guarantees for excess surrogate ambiguity risk. The authors also formulate the learning task as a constrained optimization problem, analyze its computational complexity in the convex setting, and empirically evaluate the approach against a competing method on several datasets.

By Mohammadreza M. Kalan, Yuyang Deng, Sanaz Hamidi
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 16

Observational Multiplicity

The paper introduces the concept of observational multiplicity, where multiple probabilistic classifiers can perform similarly yet produce conflicting predictions, undermining interpretability and safety. It proposes measuring this arbitrariness through a regret metric that captures how predictions could shift with different training labels. The authors present a general method to estimate regret, show it varies across dataset groups, and discuss its use for safety via abstention and targeted data collection.

By Erin George, Deanna Needell, Berk Ustun
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 4

T-TAMER: Provably Taming Trade-offs in ML Serving

arXiv:2509. 22992v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: As machine learning models continue to grow in size and complexity, efficient serving faces increasingly broad trade-offs spanning accuracy, latency, resource usage, and other objectives.

By Yuanyuan Yang, Ruimin Zhang, Jamie Morgenstern, Haifeng Xu
arXiv Statistics ML
3d ago

Constrained Classification and Policy Learning

The paper investigates the consistency of surrogate loss methods for classification and policy learning when the set of admissible classifiers is constrained, such as by interpretability or fairness requirements. It shows that hinge loss is the only surrogate that preserves consistency when constraints limit only the prediction set, but consistency can fail if constraints also restrict the functional form. The authors derive conditions guaranteeing consistency for hinge-risk-minimizing classifiers and use these results to design efficient hinge-loss-based procedures for monotone classification problems.

By Toru Kitagawa, Shosei Sakaguchi, Aleksey Tetenov
arXiv Machine Learning
Aug 20

Contrasting Cost-Agnostic and Cost-Sensitive Losses under Limited Model Capacity via $\mathcal H$-consistency

The paper investigates the difference between cost‑agnostic and cost‑sensitive loss functions when model capacity is limited. It shows that, unlike in ideal infinite‑capacity settings, optimizing a cost‑sensitive objective can yield a strictly better downstream decision than post‑processing a cost‑agnostic model. The authors prove this gap under a hypothesis class that can recover the optimal decision boundary but not the optimal cost‑agnostic hypothesis, and provide a simple example and empirical evidence on UCI datasets with simple models.

By Jessica Finocchiaro, Sanket Shah, Milind Tambe