mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

When Identical Rows Disagree: From Benchmark Identifiability to Replication-Robust Anomaly Detection

arXiv 2609.29580 ↗First posted 27 Aug 2026cs.LG stat.MLcited by 0

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Abstract (arXiv)

A released table is often treated as an i.i.d. sample, although its repeated rows may encode business frequency, repeated entities, joins, resampling, or extraction errors. We show that this ambiguity creates a hidden measurement layer with three consequences: feature-identical rows impose an attained evaluation ceiling, row-weighted AUROC is sensitive to replication, and row-trained detectors learn a multiplicity-size-biased law. An exact-row audit of all 690 OddBench datasets finds train-test overlap in 355, feature-identical label conflict in 147, and a test anomaly identical to a training normal in 137. Switching from row to support weighting changes AUROC by at least 0.05 on 50-61 datasets across four classical detector geometries. We introduce SCOUT (Support-Count Orthogonalized Unsupervised Testing), a factorized anomaly detector that separates replication-invariant support evidence from exposure-aware count evidence. Factorwise split-conformal calibration yields marginal false-positive-rate control, while the support channel is exactly invariant to arbitrary positive row replication. On 686 OddBench datasets and five seeds, support-only SCOUT is non-inferior to row-wise Isolation Forest in raw AUROC and improves replication-invariant AUROC. External normal-support evaluations track nominal false-positive levels, and four backbones remain exactly unchanged under controlled replication. Semi-synthetic interventions show that conditional count modeling helps materially only under strong rate heterogeneity. These results specify when multiplicity should be treated as signal, nuisance, or uninterpretable without additional information.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 17 of its 23 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Aug 2026.

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References · 17

  1. 2022ADBench: Anomaly Detection Benchmarkcited by 232
  2. 2019PyOD: A Python Toolbox for Scalable Outlier Detectioncited by 222
  3. 2022Deep Isolation Forest for Anomaly Detectioncited by 92
  4. 2024A Closer Look at AUROC and AUPRC under Class Imbalancecited by 57
  5. 2024TabReD: Analyzing Pitfalls and Filling the Gaps in Tabular Deep Learning Benchmarkscited by 33
  6. 2023Unsupervised anomaly detection algorithms on real-world data: how many do we need?cited by 20
  7. 2023Beyond Individual Input for Deep Anomaly Detection on Tabular Datacited by 16
  8. 2023Derandomized Novelty Detection with FDR Control via Conformal E-valuescited by 15
  9. 2025Robust Conformal Outlier Detection under Contaminated Reference Datacited by 12
  10. 2024FoMo-0D: A Foundation Model for Zero-shot Tabular Outlier Detectioncited by 11
  11. 2026Tabular Foundation Models are Strong Graph Anomaly Detectorscited by 9
  12. 2026From Zero to Hero: Advancing Zero-Shot Foundation Models for Tabular Outlier Detectioncited by 9
5 more
  1. 2023Intrinsic Self-Supervision for Data Quality Auditscited by 8
  2. 2023Anomaly Detection with Variance Stabilized Density Estimationcited by 8
  3. 2023Invariant Anomaly Detection under Distribution Shifts: A Causal Perspectivecited by 8
  4. 2026MacrOData: New Benchmarks of Thousands of Datasets for Tabular Outlier Detectioncited by 5
  5. 2026EventADL: Open-Box Anomaly Detection and Localization Framework for Events in Cloud-Based Service Systemscited by 1

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