Upper Entropy for 2-Monotone Lower Probabilities

arXiv cs.LG / 3/26/2026

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Key Points

  • The paper focuses on computing upper entropy within credal (set-based) approaches to uncertainty quantification, which is used for tasks like model selection, regularization, active learning, and out-of-distribution detection.
  • It provides an in-depth algorithmic treatment and complexity analysis for the upper entropy problem in the context of 2-monotone lower probabilities.
  • The authors show the problem admits a strongly polynomial solution, indicating improved efficiency guarantees over prior approaches.
  • They propose multiple significant algorithmic improvements compared with earlier methods tailored to 2-monotone lower probabilities and related special cases.

Abstract

Uncertainty quantification is a key aspect in many tasks such as model selection/regularization, or quantifying prediction uncertainties to perform active learning or OOD detection. Within credal approaches that consider modeling uncertainty as probability sets, upper entropy plays a central role as an uncertainty measure. This paper is devoted to the computational aspect of upper entropies, providing an exhaustive algorithmic and complexity analysis of the problem. In particular, we show that the problem has a strongly polynomial solution, and propose many significant improvements over past algorithms proposed for 2-monotone lower probabilities and their specific cases.