Word
distribution shift
Definition
n. a change between the examples an AI was trained on and the real-world situations it encounters when deployed.
n. a discrepancy between the joint probability distribution of inputs and outputs in training data and the distribution encountered during operational deployment.
Examples
“A self-driving car trained only in sunny California failed in snowy weather due to distribution shift.”
“Financial prediction algorithms frequently fail during sudden market panics because of acute distribution shift.”
“Mitigating distribution shift requires continuous monitoring of statistical divergence metrics between live feature streams and baseline training distributions.”
Examples
simple
“A self-driving car trained only in sunny California failed in snowy weather due to distribution shift.”
contextual
“Financial prediction algorithms frequently fail during sudden market panics because of acute distribution shift.”
complex
“Mitigating distribution shift requires continuous monitoring of statistical divergence metrics between live feature streams and baseline training distributions.”
Etymology
Compound statistical term from distribution (from Latin distributio, 'apportionment') and shift (Old English sciftan, 'to divide, separate, arrange').
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Domains
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/distribution-shift