Towards Inferential Reproducibility of Machine Learning Research
Reliability of machine learning evaluation -- the consistency of observed evaluation scores across replicated model training runs -- is affected by several sources of nondeterminism which can be regarded as measurement noise. Current tendencies to remove noise in order to enforce reproducibility of research results neglect inherent nondeterminism at the implementation level and disregard crucial interaction effects between algorithmic noise factors and data properties. This limits the scope of conclusions that can be drawn from such experiments. Instead of removing noise, we propose to incorporate several sources of variance, including their interaction with data properties, into an analysis of significance and reliability of machine learning evaluation, with the aim to draw inferences beyond particular instances of trained models. We show how to use linear mixed effects models (LMEMs) to analyze performance evaluation scores, and to conduct statistical inference with a generalized likelihood ratio test (GLRT). This allows us to incorporate arbitrary sources of noise like meta-parameter variations into statistical significance testing, and to assess performance differences conditional on data properties. Furthermore, a variance component analysis (VCA) enables the analysis of the contribution of noise sources to overall variance and the computation of a reliability coefficient by the ratio of substantial to total variance.
Code (0)
등록된 구현이 없습니다.
Methods 이 논문이 사용한 방법론
Similar Papers 제목 키워드 기반
Improving Reproducibility in Machine Learning Research (A Report from the NeurIPS 2019 Reproducibility Program)
One of the challenges in machine learning research is to ensure that presented and published results are sound and reliable. Reproducibility, that is obtaining similar results as presented in a paper or talk, using the s…
BIG-bench Machine LearningMORF: A Framework for Predictive Modeling and Replication At Scale With Privacy-Restricted MOOC Data
Big data repositories from online learning platforms such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) represent an unprecedented opportunity to advance research on education at scale and impact a global population of learners…
Reproducibility in Machine Learning-Driven Research
Research is facing a reproducibility crisis, in which the results and findings of many studies are difficult or even impossible to reproduce. This is also the case in machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI…
Reproducibility in machine learning for medical imaging
Reproducibility is a cornerstone of science, as the replication of findings is the process through which they become knowledge. It is widely considered that many fields of science are undergoing a reproducibility crisis.…
Reproducibility and Geometric Intrinsic Dimensionality: An Investigation on Graph Neural Network Research
Difficulties in replication and reproducibility of empirical evidences in machine learning research have become a prominent topic in recent years. Ensuring that machine learning research results are sound and reliable re…
Graph Neural Network