# Improving the Sensitivity of Gravitational Wave Detection with Weighted Conformal Prediction

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.11401 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.11401/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 53 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 10 Sep 2026.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [A Gentle Introduction to Conformal Prediction and Distribution-Free Uncertainty Quantification](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.07511/) (2021)
- [Conformal Prediction Under Covariate Shift](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1904.06019/) (2019)
- [On Wasserstein Two Sample Testing and Related Families of Nonparametric Tests](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1509.02237/) (2015)
- [Class-Conditional Conformal Prediction with Many Classes](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.09335/) (2023)
- [KMM-CP: Practical Conformal Prediction under Covariate Shift via Selective Kernel Mean Matching](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.26415/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

In the last decade, kilometre-scale interferometric gravitational-wave detectors have observed hundreds of compact binary mergers, the majority of which are binary black holes. However, the data are noise-dominated, and multiple independent search algorithms (pipelines) are used to enhance sensitivity and improve robustness. Rather than the standard approach of selecting the most significant pipeline output, we combine the outputs from all pipelines using a conformal prediction-based framework to provide statistically rigorous confidence estimates for candidate events. While combining pipelines improves sensitivity and ranking robustness, it requires a principled statistical framework that remains valid as data properties evolve across observing runs. A key challenge is distribution shifts between simulated datasets used for training and calibration and the real, unlabelled, observations used for testing, which can invalidate coverage guarantees and bias confidence estimates. In this work, we address this challenge by incorporating likelihood-ratio reweighting into our conformal prediction framework to account for covariate shift. Using mock datasets containing simulated signals, we demonstrate that weighted conformal prediction restores well-calibrated coverage under covariate shift and increases the confidence of events near the detection threshold, recovering true signals that would otherwise be missed.