Exploring the Algorithm-Dependent Generalization of AUPRC Optimization with List Stability

Peisong Wen, Qianqian Xu, Zhiyong Yang, Yuan He, Qingming Huang

Keywords: AUPRC optimization, generalization via stability, learning to rank, deep learning

Abstract: Stochastic optimization of the Area Under the Precision-Recall Curve (AUPRC) is a crucial problem for machine learning. Although various algorithms have been extensively studied for AUPRC optimization, the generalization is only guaranteed in the multi-query case. In this work, we present the first trial in the single-query generalization of stochastic AUPRC optimization. For sharper generalization bounds, we focus on algorithm-dependent generalization. There are both algorithmic and theoretical obstacles to our destination. From an algorithmic perspective, we notice that the majority of existing stochastic estimators are biased when the sampling strategy is biased, and is leave-one-out unstable due to the non-decomposability. To address these issues, we propose a sampling-rate-invariant unbiased stochastic estimator with superior stability. On top of this, the AUPRC optimization is formulated as a composition optimization problem, and a stochastic algorithm is proposed to solve this problem. From a theoretical perspective, standard techniques of the algorithm-dependent generalization analysis cannot be directly applied to such a listwise compositional optimization problem. To fill this gap, we extend the model stability from instancewise losses to listwise losses and bridge the corresponding generalization and stability. Additionally, we construct state transition matrices to describe the recurrence of the stability, and simplify calculations by matrix spectrum. Practically, experimental results on three image retrieval datasets on speak to the effectiveness and soundness of our framework.