Learning What Evaluators Value: A Reliable Approach to Modeling Evaluator Preferences
Pith reviewed 2026-05-20 20:00 UTC · model grok-4.3
The pith
An algorithm learns any coordinate-wise non-decreasing evaluator preference without losing performance under linear cases.
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
Core claim
We present an algorithm for learning evaluator preferences under the sole assumption that the preference function is coordinate-wise non-decreasing. We prove that the algorithm can learn any such preference function and that it incurs no performance penalty relative to linear-assumption methods when preferences are in fact linear. We also characterize the severity of model mismatch under common stronger assumptions and validate the method on synthetic simulations and real-world data involving both human and LLM evaluators.
What carries the argument
A robust learning algorithm that operates directly on coordinate-wise non-decreasing preference functions and avoids degradation from model mismatch.
Load-bearing premise
The preference function is coordinate-wise non-decreasing.
What would settle it
A collection of evaluation examples where the true preference decreases along at least one coordinate and the algorithm's recovered model produces substantially worse predictions than a correctly specified alternative.
Figures
read the original abstract
In many applications, human and LLM evaluators use assessments of relevant criteria to create an overall evaluation for an item or individual. For example, in admissions, committees assess candidates on attributes such as test scores, GPA, and research experience to evaluate their overall fit for the program. Another example arises in medical care where clinicians use patient reports of symptoms to consider preliminary diagnoses and assess risks. Each setting involves mapping multiple criteria to an overall evaluation -- a process that reflects the evaluator's underlying preferences. We focus on the fundamental question of learning these preferences. Many applications of this problem make specific modeling assumptions on evaluator preferences that may be substantially violated in the real world. We make the minimal assumption that the preference function is coordinate-wise non-decreasing, which is reasonable in a large number of evaluation settings. We theoretically characterize the severity of model mismatch for many common assumptions and show that it can lead to significant issues for learning evaluator preferences and other important downstream tasks. We then present an algorithm for learning evaluators' preferences that is robust to model mismatch. We prove theoretically that our algorithm can learn any preference function without sacrificing performance when the linearity assumption holds. Evaluations of our algorithm with synthetic simulations and real-world data confirm its ability to learn preferences robustly and illustrate key aspects of LLM and human preferences.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The manuscript proposes learning evaluator preferences under the sole modeling assumption that the preference function is coordinate-wise non-decreasing. It derives mismatch bounds showing that common parametric families (e.g., linear) can produce large errors, introduces a robust algorithm, proves that the algorithm recovers arbitrary coordinate-wise non-decreasing functions while exactly matching linear-model performance when the ground truth is linear, and validates the approach on synthetic data plus real-world human and LLM evaluation tasks.
Significance. If the theoretical results hold, the work is significant for preference modeling in admissions, medical risk assessment, and LLM alignment, because it supplies both a quantitative characterization of mismatch severity and a no-sacrifice guarantee that removes the usual trade-off between robustness and efficiency under correct linearity. The combination of explicit minimal assumption, mismatch analysis, and dual synthetic/real-world evaluation strengthens its practical relevance.
major comments (2)
- [Abstract and §4] Abstract and §4 (theoretical results): the central claim that the algorithm recovers any coordinate-wise non-decreasing preference function without sacrificing linear performance is load-bearing; the manuscript states the result but the provided text does not contain the full derivation steps or the precise conditions on the evaluation oracle and noise model needed to verify the no-sacrifice property.
- [§3.2] §3.2 (mismatch bounds): the claim that mismatch 'can lead to significant issues for learning evaluator preferences and other important downstream tasks' is asserted after deriving bounds for common families, yet no concrete numerical example or downstream-task simulation is given to show when the bound exceeds a practically relevant threshold.
minor comments (2)
- [§2] Notation for the preference function f and the coordinate-wise non-decreasing property should be introduced with a formal definition in §2 rather than deferred to the algorithm section.
- [Experiments] The real-world experiment section would benefit from an explicit table listing the number of evaluators, number of criteria, and total items evaluated to support reproducibility.
Simulated Author's Rebuttal
We thank the referee for their constructive and detailed feedback on our manuscript. We address each major comment below, indicating the revisions we will make to improve clarity and completeness.
read point-by-point responses
-
Referee: [Abstract and §4] Abstract and §4 (theoretical results): the central claim that the algorithm recovers any coordinate-wise non-decreasing preference function without sacrificing linear performance is load-bearing; the manuscript states the result but the provided text does not contain the full derivation steps or the precise conditions on the evaluation oracle and noise model needed to verify the no-sacrifice property.
Authors: We agree that the full derivation steps and precise conditions on the evaluation oracle and noise model are necessary to allow verification of the central no-sacrifice claim. In the revised manuscript we will expand the theoretical section (and add an appendix if space is limited) to include the complete proof of recovery for arbitrary coordinate-wise non-decreasing functions together with the exact assumptions on the oracle (e.g., access model and query type) and the noise model (e.g., bounded or sub-Gaussian noise) under which the algorithm matches linear performance when the ground truth is linear. revision: yes
-
Referee: [§3.2] §3.2 (mismatch bounds): the claim that mismatch 'can lead to significant issues for learning evaluator preferences and other important downstream tasks' is asserted after deriving bounds for common families, yet no concrete numerical example or downstream-task simulation is given to show when the bound exceeds a practically relevant threshold.
Authors: We acknowledge that a concrete numerical illustration would help readers assess when the derived mismatch bounds become practically consequential. We will add a short numerical example and/or simulation in the revised §3.2 (or a new subsection) that instantiates the bounds for representative parameter values and shows the resulting error in a downstream task such as ranking or selection, thereby demonstrating when the bound exceeds a relevant threshold. revision: yes
Circularity Check
No significant circularity detected in derivation chain
full rationale
The paper states the coordinate-wise non-decreasing assumption explicitly as the minimal modeling choice, derives mismatch bounds for common parametric families, and supplies both a general algorithm and a separate no-sacrifice proof that the algorithm matches linear-model performance exactly when the true function is linear. These steps are self-contained against the stated assumption and do not reduce by construction to fitted parameters, self-citations, or renamed inputs. Independent synthetic simulations and real-world data evaluations are supplied as external checks. No load-bearing step matches any of the enumerated circularity patterns.
Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger
axioms (1)
- domain assumption The preference function is coordinate-wise non-decreasing.
Reference graph
Works this paper leans on
-
[1]
Bridging Human and LLM Judgments : Understanding and Narrowing the Gap , December 2025
Polo, Felipe Maia and Wang, Xinhe and Yurochkin, Mikhail and Xu, Gongjun and Banerjee, Moulinath and Sun, Yuekai , month = dec, year =. Bridging. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2508.12792 , abstract =
-
[2]
Liu, Yuxuan and Yang, Tianchi and Huang, Shaohan and Zhang, Zihan and Huang, Haizhen and Wei, Furu and Deng, Weiwei and Sun, Feng and Zhang, Qi , month = feb, year =. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2402.15754 , abstract =
- [3]
-
[4]
NPJ Mental Health Research , author =
Development of the treatment prediction model in the artificial intelligence in depression – medication enhancement study , volume =. NPJ Mental Health Research , author =. 2025 , pages =. doi:10.1038/s44184-025-00136-8 , abstract =
-
[5]
Journal of the American Statistical Association , author =
Estimating. Journal of the American Statistical Association , author =. 2012 , pages =. doi:10.1080/01621459.2012.695674 , abstract =
-
[6]
Evaluating collaborative filtering recommender systems , volume =. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. , author =. 2004 , pages =. doi:10.1145/963770.963772 , abstract =
-
[7]
Artificial. Academic Medicine , author =. 2023 , pages =. doi:10.1097/ACM.0000000000005202 , abstract =
-
[8]
James and Huang, Melody and Imai, Kosuke and Jiang, Zhichao and Shin, Sooahn , month = oct, year =
Ben-Michael, Eli and Greiner, D. James and Huang, Melody and Imai, Kosuke and Jiang, Zhichao and Shin, Sooahn , month = oct, year =. Does. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2403.12108 , abstract =
-
[9]
and Su, Buxin and Collina, Natalie and Deng, Zhun and Su, Weijie , month = jan, year =
Wen, Garrett G. and Su, Buxin and Collina, Natalie and Deng, Zhun and Su, Weijie , month = jan, year =. Recommending. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2601.15249 , abstract =
-
[10]
Su, Buxin and Collina, Natalie and Wen, Garrett and Li, Didong and Cho, Kyunghyun and Fan, Jianqing and Zhao, Bingxin and Su, Weijie , month = nov, year =. How to. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2510.02143 , abstract =
-
[11]
Brandt, Felix and Conitzer, Vincent and Endriss, Ulle and Lang, Jerome and Procaccia, Ariel D , year =. Handbook of
-
[12]
van der and Dudoit, Sandrine and Laan, Mark J
Vaart, Aad W. van der and Dudoit, Sandrine and Laan, Mark J. van der , year =. Oracle inequalities for multi-fold cross validation , volume =. Statistics & Risk Modeling , publisher =
- [13]
-
[14]
Grattafiori, Aaron and Dubey, Abhimanyu and Jauhri, Abhinav and Pandey, Abhinav and Kadian, Abhishek and Al-Dahle, Ahmad and Letman, Aiesha and Mathur, Akhil and Schelten, Alan and Vaughan, Alex and Yang, Amy and Fan, Angela and Goyal, Anirudh and Hartshorn, Anthony and Yang, Aobo and Mitra, Archi and Sravankumar, Archie and Korenev, Artem and Hinsvark, A...
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.2407.21783
-
[15]
OpenAI and Achiam, Josh and Adler, Steven and Agarwal, Sandhini and Ahmad, Lama and Akkaya, Ilge and Aleman, Florencia Leoni and Almeida, Diogo and Altenschmidt, Janko and Altman, Sam and Anadkat, Shyamal and Avila, Red and Babuschkin, Igor and Balaji, Suchir and Balcom, Valerie and Baltescu, Paul and Bao, Haiming and Bavarian, Mohammad and Belgum, Jeff a...
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.2303.08774
-
[16]
Yu, Sungduk and Luo, Man and Madasu, Avinash and Lal, Vasudev and Howard, Phillip , month = feb, year =. Is. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2502.19614 , abstract =
-
[17]
A Voting-Based System for Ethical Decision Making
Noothigattu, Ritesh and Gaikwad, Snehalkumar 'Neil' S. and Awad, Edmond and Dsouza, Sohan and Rahwan, Iyad and Ravikumar, Pradeep and Procaccia, Ariel D. , month = dec, year =. A. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1709.06692 , abstract =
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.1709.06692
- [18]
-
[19]
Arrow, Kenneth , year =. Social
-
[20]
Journal of Machine Learning Research , author =
Simple,. Journal of Machine Learning Research , author =
-
[21]
Iterative ranking from pair-wise comparisons , url =
-
[22]
Feeling the Bern: Adaptive Estimators for Bernoulli Probabilities of Pairwise Comparisons
Shah, Nihar B. and Balakrishnan, Sivaraman and Wainwright, Martin J. , month = mar, year =. Feeling the. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1603.06881 , abstract =
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.1603.06881
-
[23]
Stretching the Effectiveness of MLE from Accuracy to Bias for Pairwise Comparisons
Wang, Jingyan and Shah, Nihar B. and Ravi, R. , month = jun, year =. Stretching the. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1906.04066 , abstract =
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.1906.04066 1906
- [24]
- [25]
-
[26]
A studentized permutation test for the nonparametric
Konietschke, Frank and Pauly, Markus , month = jan, year =. A studentized permutation test for the nonparametric. Electronic Journal of Statistics , publisher =. doi:10.1214/12-EJS714 , abstract =
-
[27]
The Annals of Statistics , author =
Exact and asymptotically robust permutation tests , volume =. The Annals of Statistics , author =. 2013 , note =. doi:10.1214/13-AOS1090 , abstract =
-
[28]
doi:10.48550/ARXIV.2510.08867 , abstract =
Sahu, Gaurav and Larochelle, Hugo and Charlin, Laurent and Pal, Christopher , year =. doi:10.48550/ARXIV.2510.08867 , abstract =
-
[29]
Fast Causal Inference with Non-Random Missingness by Test-Wise Deletion
Strobl, Eric V. and Visweswaran, Shyam and Spirtes, Peter L. , month = may, year =. Fast. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1705.09031 , abstract =
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.1705.09031
-
[30]
Zhang, Kun and Zhang, Jiji and Huang, Biwei and Schölkopf, Bernhard and Glymour, Clark , month = jun, year =. On the identifiability and estimation of functional causal models in the presence of outcome-dependent selection , isbn =. Proceedings of the
-
[31]
Applied Informatics , author =
Causal discovery and inference: concepts and recent methodological advances , volume =. Applied Informatics , author =. 2016 , pages =. doi:10.1186/s40535-016-0018-x , abstract =
-
[32]
Tu, Ruibo and Zhang, Kun and Ackermann, Paul and Bertilson, Bo Christer and Glymour, Clark and Kjellström, Hedvig and Zhang, Cheng , month = jul, year =. Causal. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1807.04010 , abstract =
-
[33]
Challenges, experiments, and computational solutions in peer review , volume =. Commun. ACM , author =. 2022 , pages =. doi:10.1145/3528086 , abstract =
-
[35]
Chatterjee, Sabyasachi and Guntuboyina, Adityanand and Sen, Bodhisattva , month = dec, year =. On. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1311.3765 , abstract =
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.1311.3765
-
[36]
Fang, Billy and Guntuboyina, Adityanand and Sen, Bodhisattva , month = jun, year =. Multivariate extensions of isotonic regression and total variation denoising via entire monotonicity and. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1903.01395 , abstract =
-
[37]
Lloyd, E. H. , year =. Least-. Biometrika , publisher =. doi:10.2307/2332466 , number =
-
[38]
doi:10.48550/arXiv.2512.10895 , abstract =
Ding, Lijie and Thomson, Janell and Taylor, Jon and Do, Changwoo , month = dec, year =. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2512.10895 , abstract =
-
[39]
Manski, Charles F. , year =. Anatomy of the. The Journal of Human Resources , publisher =. doi:10.2307/145818 , abstract =
- [40]
- [41]
-
[42]
and Barber, Rina Foygel and Willett, Rebecca , month = apr, year =
Soloff, Jake A. and Barber, Rina Foygel and Willett, Rebecca , month = apr, year =. Building a stable classifier with the inflated argmax , url =. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2405.14064 , abstract =
-
[43]
On the bias, risk and consistency of sample means in multi-armed bandits , url =
Shin, Jaehyeok and Ramdas, Aaditya and Rinaldo, Alessandro , month = apr, year =. On the bias, risk and consistency of sample means in multi-armed bandits , url =. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1902.00746 , abstract =
-
[44]
How much does your data exploration overfit?
Russo, Daniel and Zou, James , month = oct, year =. How much does your data exploration overfit?. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1511.05219 , abstract =
-
[45]
Asymptotics of cross-validation , volume =
Austern, Morgane and Zhou, Wenda , month = nov, year =. Asymptotics of cross-validation , volume =. Annales de l'Institut Henri Poincaré, Probabilités et Statistiques , publisher =. doi:10.1214/24-AIHP1488 , abstract =
-
[46]
Non-stochastic Best Arm Identification and Hyperparameter Optimization
Jamieson, Kevin and Talwalkar, Ameet , month = feb, year =. Non-stochastic. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1502.07943 , abstract =
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.1502.07943
-
[47]
Gabillon, Victor and Ghavamzadeh, Mohammad and Lazaric, Alessandro and Bubeck, Sébastien , year =. Multi-. Advances in
-
[48]
Locally minimax optimal confidence sets for the best model , url =
Kim, Ilmun and Ramdas, Aaditya , month = sep, year =. Locally minimax optimal confidence sets for the best model , url =. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2503.21639 , abstract =
-
[49]
Zhang, Tianyu and Lee, Hao and Lei, Jing , month = jan, year =. Winners with. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2408.02060 , abstract =
-
[53]
Ramsey, J. B. , year =. Tests for. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series B (Methodological) , publisher =
-
[54]
HotelRec : a Novel Very Large - Scale Hotel Recommendation Dataset , February 2020
Antognini, Diego and Faltings, Boi , month = feb, year =. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2002.06854 , abstract =
-
[55]
Aldridge, Irene , month = dec, year =. Regret in. doi:10.2139/ssrn.5987415 , abstract =
-
[56]
Hsu, Chih-Wei and Kveton, Branislav and Meshi, Ofer and Mladenov, Martin and Szepesvari, Csaba , month = jun, year =. Empirical. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1904.02664 , abstract =
-
[57]
Random Design A nalysis of Ridge Regression
Random. Foundations of Computational Mathematics , author =. 2014 , pages =. doi:10.1007/s10208-014-9192-1 , abstract =
-
[58]
Sauer, Brian and Brookhart, M. Alan and Roy, Jason A. and VanderWeele, Tyler J. , month = jan, year =. Covariate. Developing a
- [59]
-
[60]
Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B: Statistical Methodology , author =
Isotonic. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series B: Statistical Methodology , author =. 2021 , note =. doi:10.1111/rssb.12450 , abstract =
- [61]
-
[62]
Berker, Ratip Emin and Armstrong, Ben and Conitzer, Vincent and Shah, Nihar B. , month = aug, year =. Designing. doi:10.48550/arXiv.2508.17177 , abstract =
- [63]
- [64]
-
[65]
Psychological Medicine , author =
Comparison of different scoring methods based on latent variable models of the. Psychological Medicine , author =. 2022 , keywords =. doi:10.1017/S0033291721000131 , abstract =
-
[66]
General Hospital Psychiatry , author =
A diagnostic meta-analysis of the. General Hospital Psychiatry , author =. 2015 , keywords =. doi:10.1016/j.genhosppsych.2014.09.009 , abstract =
-
[67]
Journal of Affective Disorders , author =
The. Journal of Affective Disorders , author =. 2018 , keywords =. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2018.02.045 , abstract =
-
[68]
Kim, Sunhae and Lee, Hye-Kyung and Lee, Kounseok , month = jan, year =. Which. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health , publisher =. doi:10.3390/ijerph18073339 , abstract =
-
[70]
Minimax rates of estimation for high-dimensional linear regression over $\ell_q$-balls
Raskutti, Garvesh and Wainwright, Martin J. and Yu, Bin , month = oct, year =. Minimax rates of estimation for high-dimensional linear regression over \. doi:10.48550/arXiv.0910.2042 , abstract =
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.0910.2042 2042
-
[73]
Breaking the $1/\sqrt{n}$ Barrier: Faster Rates for Permutation-based Models in Polynomial Time
Mao, Cheng and Pananjady, Ashwin and Wainwright, Martin J. , month = jun, year =. Breaking the \ 1/. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1802.09963 , abstract =
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.1802.09963
-
[74]
Low Permutation-rank Matrices: Structural Properties and Noisy Completion
Shah, Nihar B. and Balakrishnan, Sivaraman and Wainwright, Martin J. , month = sep, year =. Low. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1709.00127 , abstract =
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.1709.00127
-
[75]
Active Ranking from Pairwise Comparisons and when Parametric Assumptions Don't Help
Heckel, Reinhard and Shah, Nihar B. and Ramchandran, Kannan and Wainwright, Martin J. , month = sep, year =. Active. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1606.08842 , abstract =
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.1606.08842
-
[76]
Stochastically Transitive Models for Pairwise Comparisons: Statistical and Computational Issues
Shah, Nihar B. and Balakrishnan, Sivaraman and Guntuboyina, Adityanand and Wainwright, Martin J. , month = sep, year =. Stochastically. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1510.05610 , abstract =
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.1510.05610
-
[77]
Journal of Inequalities and Applications , author =
Rank-one perturbation bounds for singular values of arbitrary matrices , volume =. Journal of Inequalities and Applications , author =. 2019 , keywords =. doi:10.1186/s13660-019-2089-4 , abstract =
-
[78]
Hauser, John R. and Toubia, Olivier and Evgeniou, Theodoros and Befurt, Rene and Dzyabura, Daria , month = jun, year =. Disjunctions of. Journal of Marketing Research , publisher =. doi:10.1509/jmkr.47.3.485 , abstract =
-
[79]
and Verma, Rohit , month = feb, year =
Zhang, Jie J. and Verma, Rohit , month = feb, year =. What
-
[80]
Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence , author =
Non-. Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence , author =. 2019 , pages =. doi:10.1609/aaai.v33i01.33014304 , abstract =
-
[82]
Importance-performance analysis:. Tourism Management , author =. 2015 , keywords =. doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2014.10.022 , abstract =
-
[83]
Measuring Business Excellence , author =
Importance-performance analysis of service attributes and its impact on decision making in the mobile telecommunication industry , volume =. Measuring Business Excellence , author =. 2009 , pages =. doi:10.1108/13683040910943072 , abstract =
-
[84]
Deng, Jinyang and Pierskalla, Chad D. , month = mar, year =. Linking. Sustainability , publisher =. doi:10.3390/su10030704 , abstract =
-
[86]
Dawes, Robyn M. , editor =. The robust beauty of improper linear models in decision making , isbn =. Judgment under. 1982 , pages =. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511809477.029 , abstract =
-
[87]
On matrix estimation under monotonicity constraints
Chatterjee, Sabyasachi and Guntuboyina, Adityanand and Sen, Bodhisattva , month = nov, year =. On matrix estimation under monotonicity constraints , url =. doi:10.48550/arXiv.1506.03430 , abstract =
work page internal anchor Pith review Pith/arXiv arXiv doi:10.48550/arxiv.1506.03430
-
[88]
Huynh, Benjamin Q. and Chin, Elizabeth T. and Koenecke, Allison and Ouyang, Derek and Ho, Daniel E. and Kiang, Mathew V. and Rehkopf, David H. , month = feb, year =. Mitigating allocative tradeoffs and harms in an environmental justice data tool , volume =. Nature Machine Intelligence , publisher =. doi:10.1038/s42256-024-00793-y , abstract =
-
[90]
Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems , author =
Learning. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems , author =. 2024 , pages =
work page 2024
discussion (0)
Sign in with ORCID, Apple, or X to comment. Anyone can read and Pith papers without signing in.