← 研踪 PaperTrailarXiv:2602.22432 · v3
LoBoost: Model-Native Local Conformal Prediction for Gradient-Boosted Trees
首次提交 2026-02-26 05:44
版本更新 2026-11-11 01:07
雷达观测 2026-11-11 13:07
摘要
Gradient-boosted decision trees are among the strongest off-the-shelf predictors for tabular regression, but point predictions alone do not quantify uncertainty. Conformal prediction provides distribution-free marginal coverage, yet standard split conformal uses a single global residual quantile and can adapt poorly to heteroscedasticity. We propose LoBoost, a model-native local conformal method that reuses the fitted ensemble's leaf structure to define a multiscale partition of the feature space. Each input is represented by the sequence of leaves it visits along the boosting path, and matching leaf prefixes define nested groups in which residual quantiles are estimated locally. By reusing the predictive structure already learned by the model, LoBoost requires no auxiliary partition or nuisance model, no retraining, and no additional data split beyond standard conformal calibration. Our theory connects the stability of the fitted ensemble and the geometry of its induced cells to local residual-score homogeneity, providing finite-sample coverage-error control and asymptotic pointwise validity as the local calibration size grows and the cells become sufficiently homogeneous. Experiments show a transparent quality-cost trade-off: LoBoost improves over global split conformal on several heterogeneous datasets, but it is not uniformly superior to the adaptive baselines and is not uniformly Pareto-optimal.
作者备注：Accepted paper version
期刊信息：Transactions on Machine Learning Research (11/2026)
观测到的版本
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v3 · 2026-11-11 01:07 · 最新观测版本
LoBoost: Model-Native Local Conformal Prediction for Gradient-Boosted Trees
Gradient-boosted decision trees are among the strongest off-the-shelf predictors for tabular regression, but point predictions alone do not quantify uncertainty. Conformal prediction provides distribution-free marginal coverage, yet standard split conformal uses a single global residual quantile and can adapt poorly to heteroscedasticity. We propose LoBoost, a model-native local conformal method that reuses the fitted ensemble's leaf structure to define a multiscale partition of the feature space. Each input is represented by the sequence of leaves it visits along the boosting path, and matching leaf prefixes define nested groups in which residual quantiles are estimated locally. By reusing the predictive structure already learned by the model, LoBoost requires no auxiliary partition or nuisance model, no retraining, and no additional data split beyond standard conformal calibration. Our theory connects the stability of the fitted ensemble and the geometry of its induced cells to local residual-score homogeneity, providing finite-sample coverage-error control and asymptotic pointwise validity as the local calibration size grows and the cells become sufficiently homogeneous. Experiments show a transparent quality-cost trade-off: LoBoost improves over global split conformal on several heterogeneous datasets, but it is not uniformly superior to the adaptive baselines and is not uniformly Pareto-optimal.
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