# Rashomon Alignment

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.25680 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.25680/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 11 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 28 Jul 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Underspecification Presents Challenges for Credibility in Modern Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.03395/) (2020)
- [All Models are Wrong, but Many are Useful: Learning a Variable's Importance by Studying an Entire Class of Prediction Models Simultaneously](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1801.01489/) (2018)
- [Similarity of Neural Network Models: A Survey of Functional and Representational Measures](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.06329/) (2023)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We propose Rashomon Alignment (RA), a new measure to assess functional similarity between two models. Existing functional similarity measures are distributional, quantifying differences between outputs of models applied to real-world data. However, these measures can be regarded as ecologically valid only for regions in the input space represented by the available data. We introduce a geometrical perspective on functional model similarity, which estimates it across the entire data space, offering a comprehensive view of decision boundary alignment independent of any specific data distribution. We also propose geometric Rashomon Alignment as a measure of geometrical similarity, which is computed using data uniformly sampled from the instance space. We perform an experimental analysis on more than 90 datasets, examining critical cases where model alignment diverges from predictive accuracy. Our results show that geometrical and distributional alignment provide different and complementary perspectives on the similarity between models and algorithms. RA can be used for multiple purposes, including model selection, ensemble construction, and enhanced interpretability of machine learning models and algorithms.
