{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/is-epistemic-uncertainty-faithfully","title":"Is Epistemic Uncertainty Faithfully Represented by Evidential Deep Learning Methods?","arxiv_id":"2402.09056","date":"2024-02-14","proceeding":null,"authors":["Mira Jürgens","Nis Meinert","Viktor Bengs","Eyke Hüllermeier","Willem Waegeman"],"abstract":"Trustworthy ML systems should not only return accurate predictions, but also a reliable representation of their uncertainty. Bayesian methods are commonly used to quantify both aleatoric and epistemic uncertainty, but alternative approaches, such as evidential deep learning methods, have become popular in recent years. The latter group of methods in essence extends empirical risk minimization (ERM) for predicting second-order probability distributions over outcomes, from which measures of epistemic (and aleatoric) uncertainty can be extracted. This paper presents novel theoretical insights of evidential deep learning, highlighting the difficulties in optimizing second-order loss functions and interpreting the resulting epistemic uncertainty measures. With a systematic setup that covers a wide range of approaches for classification, regression and counts, it provides novel insights into issues of identifiability and convergence in second-order loss minimization, and the relative (rather than absolute) nature of epistemic uncertainty measures.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.09056v3","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2402.09056v3.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"is-epistemic-uncertainty-faithfully","repo_url":"https://github.com/mkjuergens/epistemicuncertaintyanalysis","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":0,"framework":"pytorch","reach":null}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"deep-learning","task_name":"Deep Learning"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":"https://syntology.ai/paper/2402.09056","atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2402.09056","mcp":{"get_harvested_code_for_paper":{"arxiv_id":"2402.09056"}},"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers","read_at":"2026-09-25T09:33:49+00:00","read_at_is":"when the build read Syntology's graph, not when any sample ran","claim":"Per-sample execution status on synthesized fixtures; not a correctness claim about the paper. Samples come from repositories linked to the paper, official or community; repo_kind says which.","repos":[{"provenance":"external:paperswithcode_snapshot_2025-07-28","url":"https://github.com/mkjuergens/epistemicuncertaintyanalysis","reach":null}],"summary":{"ran_draft_wrong":1},"by_repo_kind":{"official":{"samples":1,"ran":1,"repositories":1}},"repo_kind_vocabulary":{"official":"The archive marks this repository official for the paper","named_in_paper":"The archive records that the paper mentions this repository; it is not marked official","listed":"In the archive's code links for this paper, not marked official and not recorded as mentioned in the paper","found_in_text":"Syntology found this repository in the paper's own text; whether it is the authors' implementation is not asserted","community":"Not in the archive's code links for this paper; a community repository Syntology harvested"},"n_pointer_only_for_licence":0,"samples":[{"code_sha256_prefix":"bcbd962f582ee376","entry":"create_model","repo":"mkjuergens/epistemicuncertaintyanalysis","repo_kind":"official","path":"epuc/models.py","file_url":"https://github.com/mkjuergens/epistemicuncertaintyanalysis/blob/HEAD/epuc/models.py","link_basis":"first_harvest_node","language":"python","status":"ran_draft_wrong","verification_level":1,"contract_check":"OUTPUT_MISDECLARED","metamorphic_tier":"deterministic","behaviour_fingerprint":false,"licence":"MIT","inline_ok":true,"mcp_get_code":{"code_sha256":"bcbd962f582ee376"}}]},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}