Jiaye Chen, Rui Qiu, Roulin Wang +1stat.ME stat.ML
We develop a marginal coordinate test for regression with Euclidean predictors and a random-object response in a separable metric space. The goal is to test whether a predictor provides additional information about the response conditional on the remaining predictors. In a semi-supervised design, an unlabeled sample is used to estimate predictor conditional means, while an independent labeled sample is reserved for inference. The resulting residuals are combined with a product-space kernel to form a kernel conditional mean dependence (KCMD) U-statistic without requiring a response residual. The primary identity-based test targets a necessary conditional mean restriction, while a multiple-transformation extension probes broader alternatives. We establish a weighted centered chi-square null limit, wild bootstrap validity, consistency against fixed detectable alternatives, and local power under mean-element alternatives. For simultaneous inference, truncated p-to-e calibration combined with e-BH provides asymptotic false discovery rate control under general dependence. Simulations with Euclidean and non-Euclidean responses, together with a New York City taxi-flow analysis, illustrate the method.
Conformalized selection has been widely applied to select high-quality candidates from large datasets with rigorous uncertainty quantification, such as reliable labeling, drug discovery, and the alignment of large language models. Nevertheless, existing methods assume clean responses on calibration data, an assumption that rarely holds in practice. In this paper, we formulate the above tasks as selecting candidates with true predicted labels or with responses exceeding certain values. We demonstrate that existing conformal selection methods fail to control the false discovery rate (FDR) or suffer from severe power loss under contaminated calibration data. To that end, we propose Robust Conformalized Selection (RCS), a unified framework for selective classification with valid FDR control under general label contamination. The key insight of RCS lies in a novel statistical reduction: by separately conditioning on different classes, we translate the intractable label noise into a localized covariate shift problem, which then enables a covariate-adjusted empirical-Bayes-type estimate of the number of false selections. Statistical properties such as the asymptotic FDR control, power optimality, and robustness of RCS are established. We further develop an instantiation of RCS under randomized response model, and also apply RCS to the task of selecting candidates with large response values. Extensive experiments on both simulated and real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of RCS.
We show that the Benjamini--Hochberg procedure can fail to control the false discovery rate (FDR) at its nominal level for correlated two-sided Gaussian $p$-values. We construct a factor model for which, at level $α=0.01$, a rigorous interval-arithmetic certificate proves $FDR>0.0104$ for all sufficiently large numbers of hypotheses. This disproves a conjecture widely believed to be true for twenty years. Monte Carlo experiments are consistent with the theoretical result. The proof was obtained by GPT-5.6 Pro and carefully checked by the author.
In selective deployment, practitioners act only on a model-chosen subset of individuals based on predicted conditional average treatment effects, but marginal conformal guarantees need not control reliability on that selected subset. We study reliable selection for black-box CATE predictors: selecting candidates whose CATE errors are below a tolerance while controlling the false discovery rate (FDR). Since CATE errors are unobservable, we construct doubly robust proxy errors from pseudo-outcomes; however, naive proxies can lose power under heteroskedasticity because variance overwhelms the reliability signal. We propose Denoised Conformal Alignment, which subtracts an estimated conditional variance component and combines conformal calibration with Benjamini--Hochberg selection. Our analysis shows that validity is governed by stability of proxy/oracle threshold labels, rather than pointwise perfection of the variance estimator. Experiments show substantially improved power while maintaining FDR control across challenging settings.
Conformal selection aims to identify test candidates whose unknown responses fall in a target region while controlling the false discovery rate. Existing methods often inherit prediction-oriented nonconformity scores, such as residual or clipped residual scores, from conformal prediction. We argue that the natural score for selection is instead the target-membership probability. This score directly addresses the binary event being selected, and any monotone transform of it gives the Neyman--Pearson oracle ranking at a fixed null selection level. This distinction is irrelevant for mean-monotone targets, where conventional scores induce essentially the same ranking, but becomes important for interval-valued, variance-driven, multimodal, or multi-condition targets, where prediction-oriented scores can be misaligned with selection power. We study membership-score-based conformal selection and isolate one conformal calibration route, Null-Calibrated Conformal Selection (NCCS), which ranks test scores against confirmed non-target calibration examples. Under null exchangeability, NCCS yields finite-sample valid null p-values, which can be combined with BY under arbitrary dependence or with BH under standard positive-dependence conditions. Experiments support the score principle: membership scores match conventional scores on mean-monotone targets, substantially improve over mean-score selection on variance-driven targets, and, when calibrated by NCCS, trade power for finite-sample null validity in rare-target regimes where direct empirical-FDP thresholding can be anti-conservative.
Large-scale hypothesis testing supports probability claims about individual hypotheses, as in empirical Bayes methods for estimating local false discovery rates. We study how such claims can be interpreted as approximately calibrated forecasts of the null hypothesis, yielding interpretable error probabilities even under model misspecification. Our approach draws conceptual inspiration from probabilistic forecasting but addresses a different challenge: unlike forecasting, where labels are eventually observed, in multiple testing the ground truth is never revealed, so calibration must be assessed stochastically and established indirectly. We address this challenge by constructing a set of pseudo-labels, derived from the spacings of ordered $p$-values, which have the local false discovery rate as their regression target. Our construction unlocks existing tools for assessing and performing post-hoc calibration in multiple testing. Notably, we find on a large-scale empirical survey of published psychology and neuroscience literature that the $q$-value, a popular error measure based on the false discovery rate, can be severely miscalibrated.
Scientific discovery relies on large-scale hypothesis testing. However, the capacity to identify true discoveries while controlling false discovery faces major challenges: obtaining relevant reference data (the null distribution) is resource-intensive, leaving finite-data uncertainty, and the procedure should account for the inherent structure in the hypothesis space, when such structure exists. Here, we present a framework for controlling the false discovery rate both when each hypothesis is evidenced only by a finite count of null draws, leaving its p-value uncertain, and when the hypothesis space carries arbitrary structure, requiring only that the structure be represented through a suitable reproducing kernel. We present two decision rules that are both robust to structural mis-specification, yet offer a distinct trade-off between exact FDR control and statistical power. The first rule guarantees exact FDR control; the second maximizes power by adapting mirror-statistic control into count space, utilizing an analytical framework to assess FDR control when exact mirror symmetry is relaxed. Furthermore, the tractability gained by the RKHS framework allows us to directly investigate finite-data uncertainties, which we leverage to suggest a policy for the efficient allocation of null distribution samples.
Huiqi Zhang, Wenyu Liao, Yiqing Shi +2stat.ML cs.LG
The deep neural network is a widely used framework in machine learning that has been widely applied in various fields. However, deep neural networks often involve a large number of parameters and inputs, many of which may be irrelevant to the goal or true output. These parameters and \textcolor{black}{input variables} not only increase computational complexity, but also contribute to additional computational cost. One solution to this problem is knockoff methods, which have proven successful in controlling false discovery rates in high-dimensional regression. Building on the knockoff methods and using the regularised neural network, this paper proposes three variable screening methods under the condition of controlling false discovery rates: \textit{one layer filter}, \textit{multiple layers filter}, \textit{variable weight aggregation filter}. In comparison with existing algorithms, we find that our algorithms show satisfactory performance.