Inverse attribute‐based optimization with an application in assortment optimization
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Many applications of inverse optimization (IO) arise in settings where the goal is to predict the future actions of an optimizing agent (e.g., an optimizing customer's future purchases). The majority of papers in this area implicitly assume an alternative‐based modeling approach: The forward model finds an optimal set of actions (decisions) from among a given set of alternatives, while the inverse model imputes objective function coefficients corresponding to these alternatives. Since the imputed weights correspond only to alternatives existing in the training set, alternative‐based modeling is limited to applications where the set of options does not change when a prediction is needed. In this paper, we apply an attribute‐based perspective, which allows IO to impute the weights of attributes that lead to an optimal decision instead of imputing the weight of the decision itself. This perspective expands the range of IO applicability; we demonstrate that it facilitates the application of IO in assortment optimization, where changing product selections is a defining feature and accurate predictions of demand are important. We compare inverse attribute‐based optimization with rank‐based and machine learning methods. We show that since IO encodes the utility optimizing behavior of the consumer into the preference learning process, it results in lower assortment regret for the store and a lower utility gap for the consumers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.014 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".