# SNAP: A Self-Consistent Agreement Principle with Application to Robust Computation

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.02013 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.02013/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 18 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 2 Feb 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 18 of 18)

- [Graph Attention Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1710.10903/) (2017)
- [Mean estimation and regression under heavy-tailed distributions--a survey](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1906.04280/) (2019)
- [Better Aggregation in Test-Time Augmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.11156/) (2020)
- [Certifiably Optimal Outlier-Robust Geometric Perception: Semidefinite Relaxations and Scalable Global Optimization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.03349/) (2021)
- [Direct Alignment with Heterogeneous Preferences](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.16320/) (2025)
- [Pairwise Calibrated Rewards for Pluralistic Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.06298/) (2025)
- [Generative Social Choice: The Next Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.22939/) (2025)
- [Chordal Averaging on Flag Manifolds and Its Applications](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.13501/) (2023)
- [Robust Subspace Recovery with Adversarial Outliers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.03275/) (2019)
- [Weighted Clustering Ensemble: A Review](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1910.02433/) (2019)
- [Ensembling Low Precision Models for Binary Biomedical Image Segmentation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2010.08648/) (2020)
- [Federated Learning for Big Data: A Survey on Opportunities, Applications, and Future Directions](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.04160/) (2021)
- [Robust Single Rotation Averaging Revisited](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.05388/) (2023)
- [Uniform Mean Estimation for Heavy-Tailed Distributions via Median-of-Means](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.14673/) (2025)
- [A Survey on Centrality Metrics and Their Implications in Network Resilience](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.14575/) (2020)
- [Kernel-Based Generalized Median Computation for Consensus Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2209.10208/) (2022)
- [Robustness of Generalized Median Computation for Consensus Learning in Arbitrary Spaces](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.05215/) (2025)
- [Alternates, Assemble! Selecting Optimal Alternates for Citizens' Assemblies](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.15716/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We introduce SNAP (Self-coNsistent Agreement Principle), a self-supervised framework for robust computation based on mutual agreement. Based on an Agreement-Reliability Hypothesis SNAP assigns weights that quantify agreement, emphasizing trustworthy items and downweighting outliers without supervision or prior knowledge. A key result is the Exponential Suppression of Outlier Weights, ensuring that outliers contribute negligibly to computations, even in high-dimensional settings. We study properties of SNAP weighting scheme and show its practical benefits on vector averaging and subspace estimation. Particularly, we demonstrate that non-iterative SNAP outperforms the iterative Weiszfeld algorithm and two variants of multivariate median of means. SNAP thus provides a flexible, easy-to-use, broadly applicable approach to robust computation.
