stat.MLJun 12, 2026

Geometric Domain Adaptation via Optimal Transport for Linear Regression in R^2

Authors: Brian BritosMathias Bourel

Organizations: IESTA, Facultad de Ciencias Económicas y de Administración, Universidad de la República, Montevideo, Uruguay · IRL-2030, Instituto Franco-Uruguayo de Matemática e Interacciones (IFUMI)

Abstract

Optimal Transport has become recently a powerful method for domain adaptation by aligning source and target distributions. We study a supervised domain adaptation problem where source and target domains are related by a rotation or a translation or a homothety in R2\mathbb{R}^2. We prove that the optimal transport map recovers the underlying map when using a pp-norm cost with p2p \geq 2. Based on this insight, we develop a method combining KK-means and optimal transport to estimate the underlying map, enabling adaptation of linear regression models when target data is scarce. Simulations demonstrate improved performance over baseline methods. Rather than relying on highly expressive deep learning architectures, we focus on classical machine learning models to emphasize interpretability and theoretical insight. This perspective allows us to explicitly characterize the role of optimal transport in recovering geometric transformations such as rotations, translations, and homotheties. Our contributions include a theoretical result linking optimal transport and rotations, translations and homothecies in R2\mathbb{R}^2, and a practical method for adaptation in linear regression offering both conceptual clarity and applied value in domain adaptation tasks in this space.

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