When Is Coarse Supervision Worth It? Cost-Aware Learning under Unknown Aggregation

תקציר מקורי באנגליתarXiv:2609.36704v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Modern learning systems often acquire supervision at multiple resolutions, trading annotation cost against information content. We study cost-aware two-resolution learning, where expensive fine labels reveal a vector response and cheaper coarse labels reveal a scalar aggregate formed with unknown weights, while the target remains the full response. The challenge is that unknown aggregation changes which directions coarse data can identify, so the value of coarse supervision depends jointly on cost, noise, and identification. We characterize this information geometry and develop an estimate-and-track policy that learns the aggregation rule and tracks the optimal resolution mix. We derive a closed-form break-even condition for coarse supervisio