Empirically Validating Conformal Prediction on Modern Vision Architectures Under Distribution Shift and Long-tailed Data
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Abstract (arXiv)
Conformal prediction has emerged as a rigorous means of providing deep learning models with reliable uncertainty estimates and safety guarantees. Yet, its performance is known to degrade under distribution shift and long-tailed class distributions, which are often present in real world applications. Here, we characterize the performance of several post-hoc and training-based conformal prediction methods under these settings, providing the first empirical evaluation on large-scale datasets and models. We show that across numerous conformal methods and neural network families, performance greatly degrades under distribution shifts violating safety guarantees. Similarly, we show that in long-tailed settings the guarantees are frequently violated on many classes. Understanding the limitations of these methods is necessary for deployment in real world and safety-critical applications.
Key facts. Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Builds on 32 of its 43 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Jul 2023.
Builds on
32 of 43 references.
References · 32
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20 more
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Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2024: 2; 2025: 3; 2026: 2.
7 papers.
- 2024TorchCP: A Python Library for Conformal Predictioncited by 9
- 2024Adapting Prediction Sets to Distribution Shifts Without Labelscited by 6
- 2025WQLCP: Weighted Adaptive Conformal Prediction for Robust Uncertainty Quantification Under Distribution Shiftscited by 5
- 2025Conformal Prediction Meets Long-tail Classificationcited by 5
- 2025Domain Adaptive Skin Lesion Classification via Conformal Ensemble of Vision Transformerscited by 0
- 2026Diagnosing Conformal Prediction Failures Under Distribution Shift: A COVID-19 Case Studycited by 0
- 2026Does Marginal Coverage Guarantee Class-Conditional Safety for Zero-Shot VLMs Under Shift?cited by 0
- 2026Does Marginal Coverage Guarantee Class-Conditional Safety for Zero-Shot VLMs Under Shift?19 Aug 2026
- 2026Diagnosing Conformal Prediction Failures Under Distribution Shift: A COVID-19 Case Study1 Jan 2026
- 2025Conformal Prediction Meets Long-tail Classification15 Aug 2025
- 2025WQLCP: Weighted Adaptive Conformal Prediction for Robust Uncertainty Quantification Under Distribution Shifts26 May 2025
- 2025Domain Adaptive Skin Lesion Classification via Conformal Ensemble of Vision Transformers21 May 2025
- 2024Adapting Prediction Sets to Distribution Shifts Without Labels3 Jun 2024
- 2024TorchCP: A Python Library for Conformal Prediction20 Feb 2024