Beyond Pinball Loss: Quantile Methods for Calibrated Uncertainty Quantification

Neural Information Processing Systems 

Among the many ways of quantifying uncertainty in a regression setting, specifying the full quantile function is attractive, as quantiles are amenable to interpretation and evaluation. A model that predicts the true conditional quantiles for each input, at all quantile levels, presents a correct and efficient representation of the underlying uncertainty. To achieve this, many current quantile-based methods focus on optimizing the pinball loss. However, this loss restricts the scope of applicable regression models, limits the ability to target many desirable properties (e.g. In this work, we develop new quantile methods that address these shortcomings.