# Streamlining Conformal Information Retrieval via Score Refinement

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.02914 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.02914/

## Key facts

- Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in RAG robustness and adaptive retrieval, one of 15 directions in Retrieval-augmented generation.
- Builds on 12 of its 21 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 3 Oct 2024.

## Placed in

- Retrieval-augmented generation / [RAG robustness and adaptive retrieval](https://mlsanity.com/rag/rag-robustness-and-adaptive-retrieval/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [Billion-scale similarity search with GPUs](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1702.08734/) (2017)
- [FEVER: a large-scale dataset for Fact Extraction and VERification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1803.05355/) (2018)
- [BEIR: A Heterogenous Benchmark for Zero-shot Evaluation of Information Retrieval Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2104.08663/) (2021)
- [A Gentle Introduction to Conformal Prediction and Distribution-Free Uncertainty Quantification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07511/) (2021)
- [Fact or Fiction: Verifying Scientific Claims](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2004.14974/) (2020)
- [Classification with Valid and Adaptive Coverage](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2006.02544/) (2020)
- [Uncertainty Sets for Image Classifiers using Conformal Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.14193/) (2020)
- [Learn then Test: Calibrating Predictive Algorithms to Achieve Risk Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.01052/) (2021)
- [Image-to-Image Regression with Distribution-Free Uncertainty Quantification and Applications in Imaging](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2202.05265/) (2022)
- [Conformal Alignment: Knowing When to Trust Foundation Models with Guarantees](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.10301/) (2024)
- [Recommendation Systems with Distribution-Free Reliability Guarantees](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.01609/) (2022)
- [Early Time Classification with Accumulated Accuracy Gap Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.00857/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 2 of 2)

- [Inference-time Unlearning Using Conformal Prediction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.03787/) (2026)
- [Language Distances are Practical for Equitable Cross-Lingual Transfer](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.32331/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Information retrieval (IR) methods, like retrieval augmented generation, are fundamental to modern applications but often lack statistical guarantees. Conformal prediction addresses this by retrieving sets guaranteed to include relevant information, yet existing approaches produce large-sized sets, incurring high computational costs and slow response times. In this work, we introduce a score refinement method that applies a simple monotone transformation to retrieval scores, leading to significantly smaller conformal sets while maintaining their statistical guarantees. Experiments on various BEIR benchmarks validate the effectiveness of our approach in producing compact sets containing relevant information.