Calibrating Decision Robustness via Inverse Conformal Risk Control

Abstract:Robust optimization safeguards decisions against uncertainty by optimizing against worst-case scenarios, yet their effectiveness hinges on a prespecified robustness level that is often chosen ad hoc, leading to either insufficient protection or overly conservative and costly solutions. Recent approaches using conformal prediction construct data-driven uncertainty sets with finite-sample coverage guarantees, but they still fix coverage targets a priori and offer little guidance for selecting robustness levels. We propose a new framework that provides distribution-free, finite-sample guarantees on both miscoverage and regret for any family of robust predict-then-optimize policies. Our method constructs valid estimators that trace out the miscoverage--regret Pareto frontier, enabling decision-makers to reliably evaluate and calibrate robustness levels according to their cost--risk preferences. The framework is simple to implement, broadly applicable across classical optimization formulations, and achieves sharper finite-sample performance. This paper offers a principled data-driven methodology for guiding robustness selection and empowers practitioners to balance robustness and conservativeness in high-stakes decision-making.

Machine Learning (stat.ML); Machine Learning (cs.LG)

arXiv:2510.07750 [stat.ML]

(or arXiv:2510.07750v3 [stat.ML] for this version)