Classifying rockburst with confidence:A novel conformal prediction approach

The scientific community recognizes the seriousness of rockbursts and the need for effective mitigation measures.The literature reports various successful applications of machine learning(ML)models for rockburst assessment;however,a significant question remains unanswered:How reliable are these models,and at what confidence level are classifications made?Typically,ML models output single rockburst grade even in the face of intricate and out-of-distribution samples,without any associated confidence value.Given the susceptibility of ML models to errors,it becomes imperative to quantify their uncertainty to prevent consequential failures.To address this issue,we propose a conformal prediction(CP)framework built on traditional ML models(extreme gradient boosting and random forest)to generate valid classifications of rockburst while producing a measure of confidence for its output.The proposed framework guarantees marginal coverage and,in most cases,conditional coverage on the test dataset.The CP was evaluated on a rockburst case in the Sanshandao Gold Mine in China,where it achieved high coverage and efficiency at applicable confidence levels.Significantly,the CP identified several“confident”classifications from the traditional ML model as unreliable,necessitating expert verification for informed decision-making.The proposed framework improves the reliability and accuracy of rockburst assessments,with the potential to bolster user confidence.

Predicting Amazon customer reviews with deep confidence using deep learning and conformal prediction

In this investigation,we have shown that the combination of deep learning,including natural language processing,and conformal prediction results in highly predictive and efficient temporal test set sentiment estimates for 12 categories of Amazon product reviews using either in-category predictions,i.e.the model and the test set are from the same review category or cross-category predictions,i.e.using a model of another review category for predicting the test set.The similar results from in-and cross-category predictions indicate high degree of generalizability across product review categories.The investigation also shows that the combination of deep learning and conformal prediction gracefully handles class imbalances without explicit class balancing measures.

Improving the accuracy of pose prediction in molecular docking via structural fltering and conformational clustering

Structure-based virtual screening（molecular docking）is now one of the most pragmatic techniques to leverage target structure for ligand discovery.Accurate binding pose prediction is critical to molecular docking.Here,we describe a general strategy to improve the accuracy of docking pose prediction by implementing the structural descriptor-based fltering and KGS-penalty function-based conformational clustering in an unbiased manner.We assessed our method against 150 high-quality protein–ligand complex structures.Surprisingly,such simple components are suffcient to improve the accuracy of docking pose prediction.The success rate of predicting near-native docking pose increased from 53%of the targets to 78%.We expect that our strategy may have general usage in improving currently available molecular docking programs.