Proposes models to better represent ordinal data with non-unimodal distributions.
problem Real-world ordinal data often have non-unimodal conditional probability distributions.
method Develops approximately unimodal likelihood models to better represent non-unimodal CPDs.
result Proposed models can effectively represent both unimodal and nearly unimodal CPDs.
New methods for ordinal classification of interval-valued data and functional data.
problem Ordinal classification of interval-valued data and functional data.
method Six ordinal classifiers are proposed, including parametric, binary decomposition, logistic regression, distance-based, k-nearest-neighbor, kernel PCA, and random forest methods.
result Considering ordering and interval-valued information improves the accuracy of ordinal classification.
New method uniquely identifies causal structure from ordinal data.
problem Challenges in causal discovery for categorical data, especially direction of relationships.
method Exploits ordinal information to uniquely identify causal structure.
result Favorable and robust performance compared to state-of-the-art methods.
Binary feedback outperforms ordinal comparisons in ranking recovery.
problem Challenges the conventional wisdom that ordinal comparisons offer richer information.
method Proposes a parametric framework for modeling ordinal paired comparisons, binarizing ordinal data, and proving faster convergence rates for binary comparisons.
result Binarizing ordinal data significantly improves ranking recovery accuracy and exhibits a substantial performance gap.
Deep neural networks for ordinal outcomes combining image and tabular data.
problem Lack of interpretable models for ordinal outcomes in mixed data types.
method Ordinal Neural Network Transformation Models (ONTRAMs) integrating DL and classical ordinal regression.
result ONTRAMs achieve performance equivalent to standard multi-class DL models but are faster and more interpretable.
Proposes a deep learning method for robust ordinal regression under label noise.
problem Label noise in real-world data constrains ordinal regression algorithms.
method Develops a deep learning approach that is robust to label noise and rank consistent.
result Demonstrates robustness to label noise and rank consistency on real data.
A new framework estimates causal effects for ordinal variables.
problem Existing causal inference methods fail for ordinal data.
method Presumes a latent Gaussian DAG model with constrained covariance matrix.
result Closed-form function for ordinal causal effects in latent space.
Many real-world datasets are labeled with natural orders, i.e., ordinal labels. Ordinal regression is a method to predict ordinal labels that finds a wide range of applications in data-rich domains, such as natural, health and social sciences. Most existing ordinal regression approaches work well for independent and id…
Ordinal data are often seen in real applications. Regular multicategory classification methods are not designed for this data type and a more proper treatment is needed. We consider a framework of ordinal classification which pools the results from binary classifiers together. An inherent difficulty of this framework i…
Ordinal regression is aimed at predicting an ordinal class label. In this paper, we consider its semi-supervised formulation, in which we have unlabeled data along with ordinal-labeled data to train an ordinal regressor. There are several metrics to evaluate the performance of ordinal regression, such as the mean absol…
Ordinal Data are those where a natural order exist between the labels. The classification and pre-processing of this type of data is attracting more and more interest in the area of machine learning, due to its presence in many common problems. Traditionally, ordinal classification problems have been approached as nomi…
In recent years it has become popular to study machine learning problems in a setting of ordinal distance information rather than numerical distance measurements. By ordinal distance information we refer to binary answers to distance comparisons such as d(A,B)<d(C,D). For many problems in machine learning and statist…
Ordinal data is omnipresent in almost all multiuser-generated feedback - questionnaires, preferences etc. This paper investigates modelling of ordinal data with Gaussian restricted Boltzmann machines (RBMs). In particular, we present the model architecture, learning and inference procedures for both vector-variate and …
New method for ordinal data improves recommendation systems.
problem Improving recommendation systems with ordinal data.
method Ordinal Non-negative Matrix Factorization (OrdNMF) for ordinal data.
result OrdNMF outperforms existing methods in recommendation experiments.
OMERF extends random forest for hierarchical data and ordinal responses.
problem Analyzing hierarchical data and ordinal responses using tree-based methods.
method Ordinal Mixed-Effects Random Forest (OMERF) that preserves flexibility and hierarchical structure.
result OMERF identifies discriminating student characteristics and estimates school effects.
This paper applies deep learning to ordinal regression, modeling it as a binary search.
problem Ordinal regression with deep learning models.
method Formulated ordinal regression as a binary search problem, using recurrent neural networks.
result Deep learning model shows comparable or better predictive power compared to traditional methods.
A popular approach for large scale data annotation tasks is crowdsourcing, wherein each data point is labeled by multiple noisy annotators. We consider the problem of inferring ground truth from noisy ordinal labels obtained from multiple annotators of varying and unknown expertise levels. Annotation models for ordinal…
Unified CI test for categorical and ordinal data maintains power in high dimensions.
problem Rapid degradation of statistical power in existing CI tests for high-dimensional conditioning variables.
method Unified CI test for categorical and ordinal data, maintaining reasonable calibration and power in high dimensions.
result Our test outperforms existing baselines in model testing and structure learning for dense directed graphical models.
When eliciting judgements from humans for an unknown quantity, one often has the choice of making direct-scoring (cardinal) or comparative (ordinal) measurements. In this paper we study the relative merits of either choice, providing empirical and theoretical guidelines for the selection of a measurement scheme. We pro…
New framework learns complex AI attitudes from heterogeneous data.
problem Heterogeneous ordinal structure in AI attitudes, poorly captured by existing methods.
method Monotone Gaussian score embedding, BNP complexity discovery, confirmatory fixed-K estimation.
result Reduced holdout MSE by 25.8% over single-graph baseline.
We propose a novel method for automatic pain intensity estimation from facial images based on the framework of kernel Conditional Ordinal Random Fields (KCORF). We extend this framework to account for heteroscedasticity on the output labels(i.e., pain intensity scores) and introduce a novel dynamic features, dynamic ra…
SurvCORN predicts survival curves using conditional ordinal ranking networks.
problem Challenges in survival analysis with censored data.
method SurvCORN: Conditional Ordinal Ranking Neural Network.
result SurvCORN improves accuracy in predicting time-to-event outcomes.
K-Models clusters functional data with ordinal constraints for better interpretability.
problem Challenges in extracting meaningful insights from functional data due to lack of interpretability.
method Integrates ordinal constraints into clustering to improve interpretability and structure identification.
result Enhances interpretability of clustering results while maintaining performance.
We introduce two types of ordinal pattern dependence between time series. Positive (resp. negative) ordinal pattern dependence can be seen as a non-paramatric and in particular non-linear counterpart to positive (resp. negative) correlation. We show in an explorative study that both types of this dependence show up in …
A scalable algorithm improves AUC optimization for semi-supervised ordinal regression.
problem Optimizing AUC for semi-supervised ordinal regression with limited labeled data.
method Proposes QS3ORAO using quadruply stochastic gradients for scalable kernelized learning. result Converges to optimal solution at O(1/t) rate, demonstrating efficiency and effectiveness. Proposes a VAE variant for ordinal content factors.
problem Isolating ordinal-valued content factors in deep latent variable models.
method Introduces a partially ordered set (poset) structure and a conditional Gaussian spacing prior model.
result Significant improvements in content-style separation over previous non-ordinal approaches.
The increasing occurrence of ordinal data, mainly sociodemographic, led to a renewed research interest in ordinal regression, i.e. the prediction of ordered classes. Besides model accuracy, the interpretation of these models itself is of high relevance, and existing approaches therefore enforce e.g. model sparsity. For…
The study explores how to infer the geometry of space forms from similarity comparisons.
problem Inferring the geometry of space forms from unreliable similarity measurements.
method Introducing ordinal capacity and spread, proving their relation to space form properties, and using statistical analysis of similarity measurements.
result The statistical behavior of ordinal spread variables can identify the underlying space form.
Reinforcement learning usually makes use of numerical rewards, which have nice properties but also come with drawbacks and difficulties. Using rewards on an ordinal scale (ordinal rewards) is an alternative to numerical rewards that has received more attention in recent years. In this paper, a general approach to adapt…
In this paper, we address the problem of measuring and analysing sensation, the subjective magnitude of one's experience. We do this in the context of the method of triads: the sensation of the stimulus is evaluated via relative judgments of the form: "Is stimulus S_i more similar to stimulus S_j or to stimulus S_k?". …
The paper develops distribution-free methods for ordinal classification.
problem Constructing valid prediction sets for ordinal classification problems.
method Leveraging conformal prediction and multiple testing with FWER control.
result The proposed methods achieve satisfactory levels of marginal and class-specific conditional coverages.
R package otsfeatures analyzes ordinal time series data.
problem Lack of tools for analyzing ordinal time series data.
method Provides functions for extracting statistical features and performing inferential tasks.
result Package enables traditional machine learning tasks on ordinal time series.
TabSODA improves imputation of surveys with skips and ordinal data.
problem Handling structural skips and ordinal responses in survey data.
method TabSODA uses an Elucidated Diffusion Model with skip pattern detection and ordinal awareness.
result TabSODA reduces ordinal missing-at-random (MACE) by up to 23.7% and improves categorical accuracy by up to 9%.
In the absence of prior knowledge, ordinal embedding methods obtain new representation for items in a low-dimensional Euclidean space via a set of quadruple-wise comparisons. These ordinal comparisons often come from human annotators, and sufficient comparisons induce the success of classical approaches. However, colle…
Probability distributions produced by the cross-entropy loss for ordinal classification problems can possess undesired properties. We propose a straightforward technique to constrain discrete ordinal probability distributions to be unimodal via the use of the Poisson and binomial probability distributions. We evaluate …
This paper extends the class of ordinal regression models with a structured interpretation of the problem by applying a novel treatment of encoded labels. The net effect of this is to transform the underlying problem from an ordinal regression task to a (structured) classification task which we solve with conditional r…
This study introduces balanced DRPS and OrderedLogitNN for better QDE of discrete-level questions.
problem Lack of ordinal regression methods and fair evaluation metrics for discrete-level QDE.
method Introduces balanced DRPS and OrderedLogitNN, fine-tunes BERT on RACE++ and ARC datasets.
result OrderedLogitNN outperforms other models on complex QDE tasks.
Study homeomorphism groups of ordinals, proving strong distortion and normal generators.
problem Understanding algebraic and geometric properties of homeomorphism groups of ordinals.
method Analyzing successor ordinals with connections to permutation groups and manifolds.
result Proves strong distortion and normal generators for homeomorphism groups of ordinals.
Study shows non-systematic bias in customer satisfaction surveys limits data value.
problem Non-systematic bias in customer satisfaction surveys limits data value.
method Used real customer satisfaction survey data of a large retail bank to show the irreducible error and suggest thoughtful survey design methods.
result A thoughtful survey design can reduce non-systematic error in customer satisfaction surveys.
Preference learning (PL) is a core area of machine learning that handles datasets with ordinal relations. As the number of generated data of ordinal nature is increasing, the importance and role of the PL field becomes central within machine learning research and practice. This paper introduces an open source, scalable…
Proposes a new method for rank-consistent ordinal regression without weight-sharing constraints.
problem Ordinal response variables in real-world prediction problems are often ignored by conventional classification losses.
method CORN framework using conditional training sets and the chain rule for conditional probability distributions.
result Improves performance substantially compared to the CORAL reference approach without weight-sharing restrictions.
Develops an ordinal-similarity framework for scalable and interpretable representation alignment.
problem Measuring representation similarity in large datasets.
method Triplet and Quadruplet Similarity Indices.
result Demonstrates inherent interpretability, robustness to outliers, and computational efficiency.
A new kernel measures brain network similarities, improving disease classification.
problem Lack of edge weight information in existing graph kernels for brain connectivity networks.
method Ordinal pattern kernel for weighted brain connectivity networks.
result The ordinal pattern kernel achieves better classification performance than state-of-the-art graph kernels.
Landmark Ordinal Embedding improves scalability of ordinal embedding.
problem Learning low-dimensional Euclidean representations from ordinal constraints.
method Landmark-based strategy (LOE) that trades statistical efficiency for computational efficiency.
result LOE is significantly more efficient than conventional methods as the number of items grows.
XOFM explains attribute effects in ordinal regression using piece-wise linear functions.
problem Lack of detailed attribute contributions in existing ordinal regression models.
method XOFM uses piece-wise linear functions to approximate attribute contributions and introduces ordinal transformation.
result XOFM provides superior explainability and state-of-the-art prediction accuracy.
Algorithm finds real line mapping from points under ordinal constraints.
problem Finding a mapping from points to real line under ordinal constraints.
method Approximation algorithm for dense case in O(n7)+(1/ε)O(1/ε1/8)n time. result Computes a solution satisfying (1−O(ε1/8))-fraction of all constraints. Lognormal distribution used for predicting team rankings in an orienteering relay race.
problem Predicting final team rankings in an orienteering relay race.
method Used lognormal distribution and Fenton-Wilkinson approximations for order statistics.
result Accurate predictions of team rankings using order statistics.
The paper proposes a test to determine the number of latent classes in ordinal categorical data.
problem Determining the correct number of latent classes in latent class models with ordinal categorical data.
method The test statistic centers the largest singular value of a normalized residual matrix by a simple sample-size adjustment.
result The test statistic converges to zero under the null hypothesis and exceeds a fixed positive constant under an under-fitted alternative.