Label-Free Model Evaluation with Semi-Structured Dataset Representations

Abstract: Label-free model evaluation, or AutoEval, estimates model accuracy on unlabeled test sets, and is critical for understanding model behaviors in various unseen environments. In the absence of image labels, based on dataset representations, we estimate model performance for AutoEval with regression. On the one hand, image feature is a straightforward choice for such representations, but it hampers regression learning due to being unstructured (\ie no specific meanings for component at certain location) and of large-scale. On the other hand, previous methods adopt simple structured representations (like average confidence or average feature), but insufficient to capture the data characteristics given their limited dimensions. In this work, we take the best of both worlds and propose a new semi-structured dataset representation that is manageable for regression learning while containing rich information for AutoEval. Based on image features, we integrate distribution shapes, clusters, and representative samples for a semi-structured dataset representation. Besides the structured overall description with distribution shapes, the unstructured description with clusters and representative samples include additional fine-grained information facilitating the AutoEval task. On three existing datasets and 25 newly introduced ones, we experimentally show that the proposed representation achieves competitive results. Code and dataset are available at https://github.com/sxzrt/Semi-Structured-Dataset-Representations.