Ordinal Regression

Ask about this topic

Overview

Ordinal regression studies prediction when labels have a meaningful order, such as disease stages, proficiency levels, or quality ratings, so confusing neighboring categories is usually less costly than making a distant error. Common approaches include cumulative-link and threshold-based models, ordinal-aware losses and soft-label distributions, and pairwise or contrastive methods that learn rank differences; newer work also incorporates hierarchy, multimodal features, and generative models. Applications span medical grading, age and image-quality estimation, speech assessment, and structured preference prediction, with evaluation often using mean absolute error, ranked probability scores, or quadratic weighted kappa alongside accuracy. A central challenge is that category order is known but the distances between levels and the uncertainty of labels often are not, making calibration, class imbalance, and transfer across datasets persistent concerns.

Latest papers

CardsList

38 papers2 papers in the last four weeks, down 67% on the four weeks before. 0.0% of all new papers.

  1. Covariate-dependent Joint Modeling of Multivariate Ordinal Preferences and Its Connections with Comparison Models

    Oct 6, 2026Yujie Chen, Antik Chakraborty, Anindya BhadraPreference ModelingPreference Learning

    Department of Statistics Purdue University

  2. More Choices, Fewer Decisions: Ordinal-Scale Bias in JEV-like Direct-Decision Models

    Sep 30, 2026Tianxiang Gao, Jinzhe Li, Zhiyuan Li +2LLM EvaluationOrdinal Regression

    School of Artificial Intelligence, Jilin University · College of Software, Jilin University · International Center of Future Science, Jilin University +1

  3. CG-HAF: An Interpretable Global-Local Lesion-Burden Fusion Framework for Ordinal Acne Severity Grading in Agentic Skincare Support

    Sep 25, 2026Muhammad Muhtasim Shahriar, Md. Naimur Asif Borno, Saad Aloteibi +1Medical Image AnalysisExplainable Medical Image Analysis

    Department of Computer Science, International Islamic University Chittagong (IIUC), Chittagong, Bangladesh · Department of Mechatronics, Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology (RUET), Rajshahi, Bangladesh · Department of Computer Science and Engineering, College of Applied Studies, King Saud University, Riyadh, 11437, Saudi Arabia +3

  4. UO-FIE: Combining Exact-Label Supervision with Graded Utility for Factivity Inference

    Sep 23, 2026Xinchen XiaoOrdinal RegressionClassification

    Xinjiang University

  5. Bayesian Deck-of-cards-based Ordinal Regression with Sequential Preference Elicitation

    Sep 19, 2026Marco Grillo, Silvano ZappalàOrdinal RegressionPreference Elicitation

    Institute of Computing Science, Poznań University of Technology, Piotrowo 2, 60-965, Poznań, Poland · Department of Economics and Business, University of Catania, Corso Italia 55, 95129, Catania, Italy

  6. HemaHier: Chain-Conditioned Ordinal Hierarchies for Lineage-Aware Bone-Marrow Cytology

    Sep 11, 2026Afshin Bozorgpour, Peter Schüffler, Edgar Jost +1Computational PathologyHierarchical Classification

    Faculty of Informatics and Data Science, University of Regensburg, Germany · Institute of Pathology, TUM School of Medicine and Health, Technical University of Munich, Germany · Munich Center for Machine Learning, Germany +4

  7. Adaptive Margin Ordinal Loss: Penalizing Center-Class Hedging in Ordinal Classification

    Sep 9, 2026Manisha KandelOrdinal RegressionAdaptive Loss Weighting

    Data Science Institute & Department of Civil, Construction & Environmental Engineering University of Delaware Newark, DE, USA

  8. MAOL: Morphology-Aware Ordinal Learning for Fine-Grained Industrial Defect Severity Grading

    Sep 2, 2026Zhaoyang Wang, Haiyong Chen, Binyi Su +4Industrial InspectionOrdinal Regression

    Hebei University of Technology Tianjin, China · Hunan University Changsha, China · Yingli Energy Development Co. Ltd Baoding, China

  9. Latent Ordinal Evidence, Misaligned Outputs: Inference-Time Ordinal Lens Alignment for Multimodal LLMs

    Aug 21, 2026Haiming Li, Yingsheng Liu, Jingmin Zhu +5Multimodal Large Language ModelsOrdinal Regression

    Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia · Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

  10. Differentiable Fuzzy Inference Layer: A Monotone, Compositional Ordinal Reasoning Head for Large Language Models

    Aug 17, 2026Zhen Zhang, Amr AlanwarCompositional ReasoningOrdinal Regression

    School of Computation, Information and Technology Technical University of Munich, Germany

  11. Few-Shot Ordinal Learning for Day-Wise Freshness Estimation with Hyperspectral Fish Images

    Aug 12, 2026Kazi Nabiul Alam, Pooneh Bagheri Zadeh, Akbar Sheikh-AkbariFew-Shot LearningHyperspectral Imaging

    School of Built Environment, Engineering and Computing, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, United Kingdom.

  12. Gaussian Meta-Space Augmentation for Stacking Ensembles in Multimodal IPMN Risk Stratification

    Aug 11, 2026Max A. Nelson, Eminenur Sen Tasci, Zhixiang Wang +12Stacked Ensemble LearningEnsemble Learning

    Machine & Hybrid Intelligence Lab, Department of Radiology, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA · Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA · Istanbul Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul University, Istanbul, Turkey +2

  13. Unimodality-Promoting Regularized Learning for Ordinal Regression

    Aug 8, 2026Ryoya YamasakiOrdinal Regression

  14. DisMix: Order-Aware Mixup for Medical Imaging via Disentangling Ordinal and Non-Ordinal Features

    Aug 5, 2026Dileepa Pitawela, Gustavo Carneiro, Hsiang-Ting ChenDisentangled Representation LearningData Augmentation

    1AIML, Adelaide University, Australia · 2CVSSP, University of Surrey, UK

  15. D3O: Dynamic Distribution Distillation for Ordinal Regression

    Jul 26, 2026Chunlai Dong, Yaojun Hu, Yuyang Xu +2Label Distribution LearningOrdinal Regression

    Zhejiang University Hangzhou, China

  16. ADABORD: a novel AdaBoost approach for ordinal classification

    Jul 23, 2026Rafael Ayllón-Gavilán, Francisco José Martínez-Estudillo, David Guijo-Rubio +2Ensemble LearningOrdinal Regression

    Department of Clinical-Epidemiological Research in Primary Care, IMIBIC, Avda. Menéndez Pidal S/N, Córdoba, 14004, Spain · Programa de doctorado en Computación Avanzada, Energía y Plasmas, Universidad de Córdoba, Campus de Rabanales, Ctra. N-IVa, Km. 396, Córdoba, 14071, Spain · Departmento de Ciencia de la Computación e Inteligencia Artificial, Universidad de Córdoba, Campus de Rabanales, Ctra. N-IVa, Km. 396, Córdoba, 14071. +2

  17. An efficient adaptive dimension selection algorithm for multidimensional probit graded response models

    Jul 20, 2026Yu Zhou, Yincai Tang, Bin Lv +1Latent Variable ModelsBayesian Inference

    1KLATASDS-MOE 1School of Statistics, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200062, China · 2Zhiyuan School of Liberal Arts,Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology,Beijing 102617, China

  18. Application of machine learning to monster level prediction in tabletop RPG game design

    Jul 10, 2026Jolanta Śliwa, Jakub AdamczykOrdinal RegressionTabular Prediction

    Faculty of Computer Science, AGH University of Krakow, Cracow, Poland

  19. Contrastive Order Learning: A General Framework for Ordinal Regression

    Jul 9, 2026Chaewon Lee, BeomJun Shim, Kwang Pyo Choi +1Contrastive LearningOrdinal Regression

    School of Electrical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea · Samsung Electronics, Seoul, Korea

  20. Stochastic Order Learning: An Approach to Rank Estimation Using Noisy Data

    Jul 9, 2026Chaewon Lee, Seon-Ho Lee, Chang-Su KimLearning to RankNoisy-Label Learning

    School of Electrical Engineering, Korea University, Seoul, Korea · Amazon AGI, Seattle, USA

  21. KOAL: Knowledge-Driven Prostate Cancer Grading with Ordinal-Aware Learning

    Jul 7, 2026Zheng Guo, Jiaqi Cui, Haocheng Xiong +5Medical Image ClassificationOrdinal Regression

    School of Computer Science, Sichuan University, China · China Mobile (Suzhou) Software Technology Company Limited, China · Shanghai Changhai Hospital, Naval Medical University, China +1

  22. PrISM-IQA: Image Quality Assessment Made Practical for Smartphone Photography

    Jun 30, 2026Shuyan Zhai, Jiaqi He, Weixia Zhang +4Ordinal RegressionImage Quality Assessment

    Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong · School of Computer Science, Institute of AI, Shanghai Jiao Tong University · OPPO Research Institute +1

  23. LOPA: Enhancing Spoken Language Assessment via Latent Ordinal Prototype Alignment

    Jun 30, 2026Hong-Yun Lin, Fu-An Chao, Bi-Cheng Yan +1Prototype LearningOrdinal Regression

    National Taiwan Normal University

  24. Deep Neural Networks with Ordinal Loss for Medical Applications

    Jun 24, 2026Tal Dvora, Rotem Haba, Gonen SingerCost-Sensitive LearningOrdinal Regression

    Bar-Ilan University Ramat Gan, Israel

  25. Reliable Conformal Prediction for Ordinal Classification Using the Ranked Probability Score

    Jun 23, 2026Stefan Haas, Luca Killmaier, Alireza Javanmardi +1Conformal PredictionOrdinal Regression

    Institute of Informatics, LMU Munich, Munich, Germany · BMW Group, Munich, Germany · Munich Center for Machine Learning (MCML), Munich, Germany +1

  26. HypOProto: Hyperbolic Ordinal Prototypes for Left Ventricular Filling Pressure Classification

    Jun 18, 2026Victoria Wu, Nima Hashemi, Hooman Vaseli +3Prototype-Based ClassificationEchocardiography

    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada · Vancouver General Hospital, Vancouver, BC, Canada

  27. Multimodal Ordinal Modeling of Alzheimer's Disease Severity Using Structural MRI and Clinical Data

    Jun 10, 2026Boris-Stephan Rauchmann, Jonathan Laib, Buse Ercik +2Alzheimer's DiseaseMedical Image Classification

    Department of Neuroradiology, LMU University Hospital, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Germany · Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, LMU University Hospital, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Germany

  28. DiffoR: A Unified Continuous Generative Framework for Universal Ordinal Regression

    May 29, 2026Hongxu Ma, Lin Wang, Chenghou Jin +6Ordinal Regression

    Fudan University Shanghai, China · Kuaishou Technology Beijing, China · Shanghai University of Finance and Economics Shanghai, China +1

  29. Learning Transferable Predictability Representations

    May 28, 2026Diyali Goswami, Auroop R. GangulyDynamical SystemsOrdinal Regression

    Sustainability and Data Sciences Laboratory (SDS Lab), Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA · AI4CaS: AI for Climate and Sustainability, Institute for Experiential AI, Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA · Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Richland, WA, USA

  30. From Kellgren-Lawrence to Calcium Pyrophosphate Crystal Deposition: A Soft-Labelling Framework for Knee Osteoarthritis Assessmen

    May 27, 2026Francisco Bérchez-Moreno, Riccardo Rosati, Maria Chiara Fiorentino +6Label Distribution LearningMedical Image Classification

    Departamento de Ciencia de la Computación e Inteligencia Artificial, Universidad de Córdoba, Córdoba, España · Department of Political Science, Communication, and International Relations, University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy · Department of Innovative Technologies in Medicine & Dentistry, Università degli Studi "G. D’Annunzio" Chieti - Pescara, Chieti, Italy +5