Factorizable joint shift revisited

arXiv stat.ML / 4/30/2026

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Key Points

  • Factorizable joint shift (FJS) is revisited as a distribution-shift setting that can be explained as a sequence of label-shift and covariate-shift events occurring in either order.
  • The work extends prior FJS research beyond categorical labels by introducing a framework that applies to general label spaces, enabling coverage of both classification and regression.
  • Using the new framework, the authors generalize existing theoretical results for FJS to settings with general label spaces.
  • They propose and analyze an extension of the EM algorithm for estimating class prior probabilities under this generalized framework.
  • The paper also re-examines generalized label shift (GLS) when labels lie in a general label space.

Abstract

Factorizable joint shift (FJS) represents a type of distribution shift (or dataset shift) that comprises both covariate and label shift. Recently, it has been observed that FJS actually arises from consecutive label and covariate (or vice versa) shifts. Research into FJS so far has been confined mostly to the case of categorical labels. We propose a framework for analysing distribution shift in the case of a general label space, thus covering both classification and regression models. Based on the framework, we generalise existing results on FJS to general label spaces and present and analyse a related extension to label distribution estimation of the expectation maximisation (EM) algorithm for class prior probabilities. We also take a fresh look at generalized label shift (GLS) in the case of a general label space.