cs.LGOct 9, 2026

Calibration in One Go: Jointly Learning Accurate and Calibrated Neural Networks

Authors: Nektarios Kalampalikis, Pablo M. Olmos, Isabel Valera

Organizations: Dept. of Computer Science Saarland University, Germany

Abstract

Neural networks (NNs), while highly flexible and versatile, are often poorly calibrated. Post-hoc calibration methods adjust the outputs of an already trained model using a separate calibration dataset and additional calibration parameters. This process adds overhead that requires separate optimization of the calibrator and subsequent model selection. In this paper, we show that standard (post-hoc) calibrators can be trained end-to-end with the backbone via a bilevel Stackelberg formulation. This formulation eliminates the need for a separate calibration set or a dedicated calibration loss by jointly optimizing accuracy and calibration using cross-entropy, introducing only one additional hyperparameter: the calibrator learning rate. Although our framework supports calibrators ranging from temperature and matrix scaling to NN layers, our results show that using the final classification layer itself as the calibrator yields accurate, well-calibrated models with no additional parameters. Our approach outperforms SOTA calibrators with minimal added complexity, while also avoiding the multiplicative overhead of separate calibration components in settings such as multi-task learning.

Figures & tables

Appendix figures & tables28 assets

Supplementary material from the paper’s appendix.

Appendix

Explore similar work

CardsList
  1. Too Sharp, Too Sure: When Calibration Follows Curvature

    Apr 22, 2026Alessandro Morosini, Matea Gjika, Tomaso Poggio +1Loss Landscape SharpnessMargin-Based Learning

  2. Neighborhood Smoothing for Calibration

    Oct 6, 2026Idan Horowitz, Avigdor GalModel Calibration

  3. Do Not Train Away Uncertainty: Early Uncertainty Anchored Calibration

    Oct 8, 2026Yutong Xie, Jiawei Tang, Zhenglin Hua +6Model CalibrationUncertainty Calibration