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Wraps an arbitrary base LearnerLCE with a split-conformal procedure that calibrates an absolute-residual prediction band on a hold-out suffix of the training batches.

Training proceeds as:

  1. The last n_calibration_batches batches of the training task are set aside as the calibration set. The base learner is fit on the remaining prefix (the "proper" training set).

  2. The base learner predicts on the calibration set and per-batch absolute residuals \(|y_b - \hat y_b|\) are collected.

  3. The conformal half-width \(q\) is set to the \(\lceil (n_{cal}+1)(1-\alpha)\rceil / n_{cal}\) sample quantile of the calibration residuals (the standard finite-sample correction).

At predict time the base learner trained on the proper-train subset is used for the point prediction. Calibration residuals are measured on the task's lce_link scale. The se column, when requested, is the constant per-row value \(q / z_{1-\alpha/2}\) (with \(z\) the standard normal quantile and \(q\) the link-scale conformal half-width). Multiplying back by \(z_{1-\alpha/2}\) recovers the \((1-\alpha)\) conformal half-width on the link scale, so the downstream interpretation g(response) ± z * se produces an interval with the chosen conformal coverage. Since the split-conformal band is a total predictive band that does not separate epistemic from aleatoric uncertainty, se_epistemic is reported equal to se.

The target_reached predict type reports the realised-reach probability (whether the observed y_b reaches the target), reading the same total band as a Gaussian on the link scale. This matches the other learners' target_reached and mlr_measures_lce_distributional's lce.reach_brier.

Two consequences of the band not separating epistemic from aleatoric uncertainty: a distributional measure scoring at a level other than 1 - alpha rescales se and only attains its nominal coverage when level == 1 - alpha; and lce_batches_to_target with crossing = "expected" (which reads se_epistemic) conflates the two and so behaves like an observed-crossing forecast for this learner.

Because the LCE batches are naturally ordered, the calibration split is deterministic: the most recent batches go to calibration, matching the "use the freshest history to calibrate the forecaster" intuition.

Creates a new conformal-wrapped LCE learner.

Arguments

learner

(LearnerLCE)
Base LCE learner to wrap.

Parameters

Combined parameter set merges the wrapper's own parameters with those of the base learner via paradox::ParamSetCollection; the base learner's parameters carry the base. prefix (e.g. base.rate_lower).

Own parameters:

  • n_calibration_batches :: integer(1)
    Number of trailing batches used as the calibration set. Initialized to 3. The proper-train set must contain at least one batch.

  • alpha :: numeric(1)
    Miscoverage level. Initialized to 0.1 (90% conformal coverage).