AI RESEARCH
Who Leads? Comparing Human-Centric and Model-Centric Strategies for Defining ML Target Variables
arXiv CS.LG
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ArXi:2510.25974v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Predictive modeling has the potential to enhance human decision-making. However, many predictive models fail in practice due to problematic problem formulation in cases where the prediction target is an abstract concept or construct and practitioners need to define an appropriate target variable as a proxy to operationalize the construct of interest. The choice of an appropriate proxy target variable is rarely self-evident in practice, requiring both domain knowledge and iterative data modeling.