Exact Risk Calculation for Candidate Scoring Decision Models: Analysis of the Impact of Teacher Supervision, Fixed Representations, and Calibration

A new arXiv paper uses Gaussian surrogate models to precisely calculate the finite-sample risk of candidate scoring decision models, analyzing the boundaries of the role of three training elements: teacher soft targets, frozen pre-trained backbones, and temperature calibration. The paper points out that after a student model inherits teacher bias, more student data cannot eliminate that bias; fixed representations only reduce risk below an explicit sample size threshold; under the probit model, exact recalibration maps to temperature scaling, and can only eliminate all excess risk when the direction of the teacher's coefficients is correct.