Tail-Aware Geometry Learning for Conformal Ellipsoids

arXiv:2609.27221v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper studies multivariate conformal prediction (CP), a distribution-free uncertainty quantification framework with finite-sample coverage guarantees. The efficiency of multivariate prediction sets hinges critically on the residual geometry encoded by the nonconformity score, while existing minimum-volume methods rely on quantile thresholds that ignore tail residual severity and implicitly bind geometry learning to coverage level. We propose a tail-aware geometry learning framework for conformal ellipsoids that decouples tail sensitivity in geometry learning from the final coverage guarantee. Using a two-split design, we learn the metric matrix via volume minimization under a CVaR constraint on an estimation split, then apply standard conformal calibration on a held-out calibration split. The resulting problem is convex and admits a bounded-reweighting interpretation that prioritizes high-residual samples. Moreover, we theoretically characterize the trade-off between ellipsoidal volume and tail severity. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.