In many operational settings, decision-makers must commit to actions before uncertainty resolves, but existing optimization tools rarely quantify how consistently a chosen decision remains optimal across plausible futures. This paper introduces CREDO -- Conformalized Risk Estimation for Decision Optimization, a distribution-free framework that quantifies the probability that a prescribed decision remains (near-)optimal across realizations of uncertainty. CREDO reformulates decision risk through the inverse feasible region -- the set of outcomes under which a decision is optimal -- and estimates its probability using inner approximations constructed from conformal prediction balls generated by a conditional generative model. By calibrating each ball to lie entirely within the inverse feasible region, CREDO obtains finite-sample valid lower bounds on decision optimality without parametric assumptions. The method avoids the conservatism of worst-case robust optimization, is compatible with modern generative models, and applies broadly to convex optimization problems. We establish theoretical validity guarantees, develop efficient computational procedures, and demonstrate through extensive numerical experiments that CREDO provides accurate, interpretable, and reliable assessments of decision reliability in both synthetic and application-motivated settings.
翻译:在许多实际应用场景中,决策者必须在不确定性完全显现之前确定行动方案,但现有优化工具很少能量化所选决策在多种合理未来情境下保持最优的一致性程度。本文提出CREDO——决策优化的保形化风险评估框架,这是一种无需分布假设的方法,用于量化指定决策在不确定性实现过程中保持(近似)最优的概率。CREDO通过逆可行域(即决策保持最优的结果集合)重构决策风险,并利用条件生成模型生成的保形预测球构建内逼近来估计其概率。通过校准每个预测球使其完全位于逆可行域内,CREDO可在无需参数假设的情况下获得决策最优性的有限样本有效下界。该方法避免了最坏情况鲁棒优化的保守性,兼容现代生成模型,并广泛适用于凸优化问题。我们建立了理论有效性保证,开发了高效计算流程,并通过大量数值实验证明:在合成数据与应用导向场景中,CREDO能够提供准确、可解释且可靠的决策可靠性评估。