Consistent algorithms for multi-label classification with macro-at-$k$ metrics

Erik Schultheis, Wojciech Kotłowski, Marek Wydmuch, Rohit Babbar, Strom Borman, Krzysztof Dembczyński

Published 2024-01-29, updated 2024-06-20Version 2

We consider the optimization of complex performance metrics in multi-label classification under the population utility framework. We mainly focus on metrics linearly decomposable into a sum of binary classification utilities applied separately to each label with an additional requirement of exactly $k$ labels predicted for each instance. These "macro-at-$k$" metrics possess desired properties for extreme classification problems with long tail labels. Unfortunately, the at-$k$ constraint couples the otherwise independent binary classification tasks, leading to a much more challenging optimization problem than standard macro-averages. We provide a statistical framework to study this problem, prove the existence and the form of the optimal classifier, and propose a statistically consistent and practical learning algorithm based on the Frank-Wolfe method. Interestingly, our main results concern even more general metrics being non-linear functions of label-wise confusion matrices. Empirical results provide evidence for the competitive performance of the proposed approach.