Constraint-Anchored Attribution: Feasibility-Certified Counterfactuals and Bonferroni-PAC Sufficient Subsets for Neural CO Policies

May 24, 2026 ยท Grace Period ยท + Add venue

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Authors Sohaib Lafifi arXiv ID 2605.25235 Category cs.LG: Machine Learning Cross-listed cs.AI, math.OC Citations 0
Abstract
We give an attribution method for neural combinatorial-optimisation (CO) policies that (i) decomposes a decision by constraint families via LP-relaxation duals, (ii) certifies counterfactuals through a combinatorial feasibility model (implemented as a CSP feasibility-decision model), and (iii) bounds the size of a PAC-sufficient explanation with a Bonferroni-corrected Hoeffding sufficient-subset test along a greedy ordering. Across three CO problems and three seeds, our LP-anchored $ฮ›$-attribution matches the CF-derived signal at 96.5% on CVRPTW (n_cert=344) and 77.2% on the Orienteering Problem (n_cert=281) vs 75.0% and 35.2% for proxy gradient (paired diffs +0.215 and +0.420; McNemar exact $p \le 10^{-14}$). In the rank-aligned regime of the Flexible Job-Shop Scheduling Problem, both backends agree on every CSP-certified flip (n_cert=59), confirming the no-gain prediction. Bonferroni-PAC subsets average 5.0 nodes per step ($M=70$, $\varepsilon=ฮด=0.2$, $k_{\max}=25$). Reference implementation: https://github.com/sohaibafifi/neuro-co-cax
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