Optimistic Rates for Multiclass PAC Learning

Abstract

Worst-case multiclass bounds do not become smaller when the best classifier is already nearly correct: what is missing is an optimistic rate, a guarantee whose fluctuation scales with the oracle risk itself. For a class of Natarajan dimension $d_N$ and Daniely-Shalev-Shwartz dimension $d_{DS}$, the optimal excess risk is known at the two endpoints ($d_{DS}/n$ realizable, $\sqrt{d_N/n}+d_{DS}/n$ agnostic [HMZ24, CEH+26, Pab26]) and open in between. We close the gap: at every fixed oracle risk $L^\star$, the optimal excess risk is $\widetilde{\Theta}(\sqrt{L^\star d_N/n}+d_{DS}/n)$, uniformly in the alphabet size, attained by a learner that knows neither $L^\star$ nor the confidence level. The upper bound composes the cover-menu-compression architecture of [CEH+26], at the realizable rate of [Pab26], with a new comparator-facing relative compression theorem: a size-$k$ compression rule that empirically dominates a comparator $h$ has population risk at most $L(h)+O(\sqrt{L(h)\Gamma}+\Gamma)$ with $\Gamma=(k\log n+\log(1/\delta))/n$, without stability; this transfers the comparison principle of the sharp binary theory [MQZ26] while discarding its Boolean-cube geometry, which does not lift to multiclass labels. The lower bound forces both terms using one class and one distribution at every fixed $L^\star$, by a pair-Assouad scheme calibrated to $L^\star$ and a fiber argument on the pseudo-cubes underlying the Natarajan-versus-DS separation of [BCD+22]. Both theorems extend to list learning: against the best $r$-tuple of hypotheses, the same architecture and the same two engines yield an optimistic rate and a lower bound of the same shape, forcing the fluctuation term that [Pab26] expected to be necessary against list comparators, and removing the factor $r$ from the known realizable list lower bound.